This Week

We are reading:

• Deuteronomy 27-34

• John 1-12

• Psalms 149-150, Proverbs 5-6:11

Summary

Whew! What a slog through the Torah but WE. MADE. IT.

Reading through the Bible in a year is one thing, but writing my thoughts on it every week is another. I, too, feel as though I’ve been wandering through the desert for 40 years.

And yet here I am — making summer plans for a road trip with three kids through the American west — my own little desert wandering adventure.

All that to say: sorry this article is a day late this week, and Happy Easter to you and your families!!

On to the Bible notes.

As we wrap up Deuteronomy, completing Moses’ narrative in these first five books of the Bible, one of the most interesting things we are reading this week is what is commonly referred to as the Deuteronomy 32 worldview. This is further validation of the story told in early Genesis and Enoch, where we learn about the supernatural conflict between the fallen angels and the humans who have dominion over the earth. In Moses’ final words, he details how God disinherited the rebellious nations at Babel, assigning them to lesser divine beings ("sons of God") while creating Israel as his own portion.

This explains why other nations worship lesser gods/demons instead of Yahweh, why idolatry is the worship of demons and receives a strong focus, and how spiritual warfare underscores the very conflicts we see between nations today.

And on that note — I am so excited to be wrapping up this section of the Bible and jumping to our very first Messianic Checkpoint with the Gospel of John!

Thank God Jesus is finally here to reverse the fallout of Babel and take back the nations.

The Gospel of John is markedly different from the other 3 Gospels detailing Jesus’ life — Matthew, Mark, and Luke, collectively called the Synoptic Gospels. The Synoptic Gospels detail what Jesus did, whereas John details who Jesus is.

John was written much later, is much more direct about Jesus’ identity as the son of God, and focused on validating that identity by documenting His miracles. It is presumed that the author didn’t want to repeat the other Gospels and was addressing an audience of heretics. John also specifically names names where the other gospels didn’t, but that won’t come up until next week’s readings.

Note to my future self, as I evolve this Bible study for next year: I gotta say, I wish I had cut about 10 days out of the plan earlier (maybe skipping Jubilees?) so we could have read John in the lead up to Easter. I might do that next year.

I really love ending the Torah and then reading one of the Gospels. It’s such a great reward. It helps us make connections. I just can’t wait 30+ more books for Jesus and I truly feel bad for the suffering Israelites. And while I definitely think the story of the entire Bible is fascinating and of course worth reading and studying, I also think if you just read the Torah, the first section of Enoch (1-36: Book of the Watchers), a few of the Gospels and Acts — you would have the outline of early world history and the baseline of the spiritual warfare we find ourselves within. You wouldn’t have the details, but you would have the shape of things.

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Here is the daily breakdown from our annual plan:

• Day 96 — Monday, 4/6 — Deuteronomy 27-28, Psalm 149

• Day 97 — Tuesday, 4/7 — Deuteronomy 29-31, Psalm 150

• Day 98 — Wednesday, 4/8 — Deuteronomy 32-34, Proverbs 5:1-6

• Day 99 — Thursday, 4/9 — John 1-3, Proverbs 5:7-14

• Day 100 — Friday, 4/10 — John 4-6, Proverbs 5:15-23

• Day 101 — Saturday, 4/11 — John 7-9, Proverbs 6:1-5

• Day 102 — Sunday, 4/12 — John 10-12, Proverbs 6:6-11

Day 96 — Monday, 4/6 — Deuteronomy 27-28, Psalm 149

• Moses and the elders command Israel to set up plastered stones with the Law written on them once they enter the promised land.

• The Levites proclaim twelve curses for hidden sins — and all the people say, “Amen.”

• Detailed blessings are given for obedience, with very specific curses for disobedience.

• Foreshadowing! Exile is foretold if Israel is unfaithful to God. Gee, I wonder what’s going to happen next.

Day 97 — Tuesday, 4/7 — Deuteronomy 29-31, Psalm 150

• God renews the covenant with Moses and Israel in Moab.

• Israel is once again warned about idolatry and secret sin.

• God promises restoration of Israel after exile.

• Moses prepares for death and commissions Joshua as the next leader of Israel.

Day 98 — Wednesday, 4/8 — Deuteronomy 32-34, Proverbs 5:1-6

• Moses delivers the Song of Moses, recounting God’s faithfulness and Israel’s failure.

• Alright now we’re getting to the interesting part of this week’s reading: the Deuteronomy 32 worldview. Wherein God divided humanity among multiple spiritual beings (often understood as angels or divine council members) and personally chose Israel as His own inheritance. The other nations are under lesser spiritual rulers, who become corrupt and lead nations into idolatry.

  • NOTE: Some of your Bibles might say “sons of Israel” in Deuteronomy 32:8, but the original in Hebrew is the infamous bene Elohim — sons of God. This passage is talking about the events of the Tower of Babel, Israel didn’t even exist! How could God have divided the nations based on the sons of Israel!

• Despite the Israelites turning away, sacrificing to demons and whatnot, God will ultimately vindicate His people.

• Moses blesses the tribes of Israel, then God shows him the promised land that he will not enter.

• Moses dies, God buries him in Moab, and Joshua succeeds him.

Day 99 — Thursday, 4/9 — John 1-3, Proverbs 5:7-14

• The Gospel of John opens with the Word becoming flesh

• John the Baptist testifies to Jesus’ arrival

• The first disciples begin to follow Jesus after his recognition from John the Baptist

• Jesus performs his first miracle — turning water into wine at the wedding of Cana, at the insistence of his mother (a nice inclusion of Mary since John completely skips the immaculate conception — again, probably to avoid repeating stories contained in the synoptic gospels)

• Jesus sees dealers and merchants selling goods in the temple and is furious they have turned His father’s house into a marketplace, so he fashions a whip and chases them all out

• The Jewish leaders are furious at this and Jesus tells them to destroy the temple and that he will rebuild it in three days — a veiled reference to his ressurection, which the disciples will later remember

Day 100 — Friday, 4/10 — John 4-6, Proverbs 5:15-23

• Jesus reads a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well for having had 5 husbands and not being married to the man she’s currently living with — but he connects with this outsider by choosing to reveal to her that He is the Messiah and selecting her as the missionary to the Samaritans, a group at odds with the Jews — ultimately showing that Jesus has come to heal and redeem all the nations

• Jesus heals a sick man on the Sabbath, pissing off the Jewish leaders yet again

• Jesus feeds 5,000 people with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish

• Jesus walks on water

• Jesus tells the people in Capernaum that he is the bread of life and that anyone who eats the bread of life will live forever in Heaven. Several disciples say this is too hard to understand and desert Him. You guys want to discuss the Eucharist in the chat?

Day 101 — Saturday, 4/11 — John 7-9, Proverbs 6:1-5

• Jewish leaders argue over whether Jesus is the Messiah

• The story of the adulterous women in John 7:53-8:11 was not included in the earliest manuscripts. Some of the early church fathers believed the story likely reflected an actual Jesus story that circulated for a long time before it was documented in this Gospel — so it’s likely historically accurate if not authentic to this original manuscript.

• Jesus heals a blind man, again on the Sabbath, and accuses the Pharisees of spiritual blindness

Day 102 — Sunday, 4/12 — John 10-12, Proverbs 6:6-11

• Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead — ultimately triggering the series of events that leads to his crucifiction

• Jesus, riding a donkey, enters Jerusalem to a crowd carrying palm leaves — on a day that will be memorialized as Palm Sunday

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This Week

We are reading:

• Deuteronomy 1-26

• Psalms 133-135, 137, 146-148

Summary

This week we begin Deuteronomy.

Deuteronomy is largely a redux of Leviticus and the entire 40 years of wandering in the desert as Moses reiterates the rules Israel is to abide by as they take over and inhabit the Promised Land.

Given the behavior of the Israelites for the last 40 years of desert wandering (hey, at least they weren’t slaves anymore), it makes sense that Moses would devote an entire book to summarizing the Israelites faults and rebellions and the rules that the next generation is to follow to stay in God’s good graces.

This week also marks Passover, which begins at sundown on Wednesday, April 1st and continues through Thursday, April 9th. Our family will be doing a Passover Seder to share the story of Exodus with our children. If you’ve never done a Passover Seder, it’s a ritual using symbolic foods and ritual acts that invite us to step into The Exodus ourselves, using story, symbolism, and questions to pass along what freedom really means and where we come from, in a way our kids can understand and carry with them.

Why is this night different from all other nights?

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Here is the daily breakdown from our annual plan:

• Day 89 — Monday, 3/30 — Deuteronomy 1-3, Psalm 133

• Day 90 — Tuesday, 3/31 — Deuteronomy 4-6, Psalm 134

• Day 91 — Wednesday, 4/1 — Deuteronomy 7-10, Psalm 135

• Day 92 — Thursday, 4/2 — Deuteronomy 11-14, Psalm 137

• Day 93 — Friday, 4/3 — Deuteronomy 15-18, Psalm 146

• Day 94 — Saturday, 4/4 — Deuteronomy 19-22, Psalm 147

• Day 95 — Sunday, 4/5 — Deuteronomy 23-26, Psalm 148

Day 89 — Monday, 3/30 — Deuteronomy 1-3, Psalm 133

• Moses recaps Israel’s journey: their failure to trust God when the scouts saw the giants in Canaan, and the resulting rebellion that led to 40 years of wandering; the defeat of King Og; Moses barred from entering the Promised Land; Joshua commissioned to lead the Israelites over the River Jordan.

Day 90 — Tuesday, 3/31 — Deuteronomy 4-6, Psalm 134

• Moses practically begs the Israelites to be obedient to God as they continue their journey into the promised land — warning against idolatry, reminding them God is near to His people, repeating the Ten Commandments, and urging them to teach the faith diligently to future generations.

Day 91 — Wednesday, 4/1 — Deuteronomy 7-10, Psalm 135

• Moses is again reminding the Israelites that they are chosen to inhabit and occupy the promised land — and that they have been chosen not for their greatness but due to God’s love for them. That God will indeed punish those who reject Him. And that they are to destroy idolatrous influences of other nations.

• He encourages them to fight the wicked giants of other nations, and to remain pure of heart by reminding them of the golden calf rebellion, and the renewed covenant on Mount Sinai.

Day 92 — Thursday, 4/2 — Deuteronomy 11-14, Psalm 137

• Moses goes over the blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience; reminding the people that their children have not witnessed the glory of the Lord traveling with them via cloud and establishing a relationship with Israel — and that the land will respond to faithfulness.

• Moses again reminds the Israelites to reject pagan worship practices, warns against false prophets, and reiterates the levitical rules about ceremonially clean and unclean animals and that radical loyalty to God is required.

Day 93 — Friday, 4/3 — Deuteronomy 15-18, Psalm 146

• Moses continues to reiterate the levitical rules to be followed: releasing those from debt and slavery in the Sabbath years; caring for the poor; celebrating the major feasts including Passover; laws on justice, kingship, and worship; and a call to living holy in the promised land (in which again we find the Israelites must be directly told not to sacrifice their children or practice witchcraft).

• Moses tells the Israelites a new prophet will be raised up to guide them — foreshadowing Jesus

Day 94 — Saturday, 4/4 — Deuteronomy 19-22, Psalm 147

• Moses describes the events to come: the Lord will destroy the existing nations illicitly living in the Promised Land, after which the Israelites are to establish cities of refuge. He reiterates the laws of justice and warfare, and urges trust in God rather than military strength.

• Moses goes over the various civil laws that provide order to the Israelites and are to be enacted in promised land (unsolved murders, family order); laws on inheritence; laws on community responsibility and sexual ethics; and protection of life and property.

Day 95 — Sunday, 4/5 — Deuteronomy 23-26, Psalm 148

• Deuteronomy 23 opens with pretty specific rules for what I hope was a rare situation in Israel: a man whose testicles were crushed or whose penis was cut off could not be permitted entry to the assembly of the Lord. This was likely about ritualistic purity of some sort of position, but still, wow.

• Moses continues to reiterate the rules that have been established throughout the 40 years of desert wandering: regulations for assembly and camp purity; protection for vulnerable people; laws on divorce, pledges, and justice; care for the poor, widows, and foreigners; fair punishment and economic justice.

• Deuteronomy 25 is straight up funny, out of exactly what circumstances did these rules arise?

• We end this week with Moses once again asking the Israelites to wholeheartedly obey the Lord’s commands.

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This Week

We are reading:

• Numbers 16-36

• Psalms 125-126, 128-132

Summary

This week we finish Numbers.

We have the origin of the infamous red heifer prophecy — a necessary ritual before rebuilding the third temple, rooted in Numbers 19.

We meet Balaam, a pagan prophet who can hear God more clearly than most of the Israelites, and his talking donkey.

We say goodbye to Miriam and Aaron, and are reminded of Joshua.

And Moses finally gets to see the Promised Land — knowing that he will never enter it.

This Bible study is free for everyone, made possible by the support of our paid subscribers.

If you’d like to support us, please consider a paid subscription. Paid subscribers receive:

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Here is the daily breakdown from our annual plan:

• Day 82 — Monday, 3/23 —Numbers 16-18, Psalm 125

• Day 83 — Tuesday, 3/24 — Numbers 19-21, Psalm 126

• Day 84 — Wednesday, 3/25 — Numbers 22-24, Psalm 128

• Day 85 — Thursday, 3/26 — Numbers 25-27, Psalm 129

• Day 86 — Friday, 3/27 — Numbers 28-30, Psalm 130

• Day 87 — Saturday, 3/28 — Numbers 31-33, Psalm 131

• Day 88 — Sunday, 3/29 — Numbers 34-36, Psalm 132

Day 82 — Monday, 3/23 —Numbers 16-18, Psalm 125

• Korah leads a rebellion against Moses and the earth literally opens up and swallows them whole? Lord, I pray you bring upon my enemies this kind of divine judgment 🙏

• The people are still grumbling about Moses and Aaron so God has Moses present a staff from each tribe — and miraculously, Aarons staff sprouts ripe almonds, signifying his authority as a chosen leader

Day 83 — Tuesday, 3/24 — Numbers 19-21, Psalm 126

• We encounter a lot of the “weirder” parts of scripture this week — including the red heifer prophecy. This is one of the Bible’s most cryptic rites. The ashes of the red heifer purify the unclean, however those who prepare it become unclean themselves.

• Miriam dies.

• Water again becomes a prominent storyline. Moses is told by God to impress the ever-complaining Israelites by speaking over a rock and getting water to flow from it — but in frustration, he strikes the rock, and though water flows, it costs him entry into the promised land.

• Aaron dies, before reaching the promised land.

• Then comes yet another strange story: after the Israelites complain about their circumstances yet again, saying they hate manna, fiery serpents overrun the camp. God tells Moses to form a bronze serpent and attach it to a pole. The people are healed of snake bites by looking directly at the image of what afflicts them. Is this the world’s first brush with homeopathy?

• There is mention of The Book of the Wars of the Lord — a lost book of the Bible that I would love to read.

Day 84 — Wednesday, 3/25 — Numbers 22-24, Psalm 128

• The King of Moab, afraid of the Israelites, sends for Balaam to curse them. Balaam, a foreign prophet who is able to perceive God more clearly than Israel, refuses to curse the Israelites as God tells him they have been blessed.

• Not only can Balaam hear God — his donkey clearly sees the Angel of the Lord multiple times. After the third time, God gives the donkey they ability to talk — by unbinding his mouth — seemingly confirming that animals used to be able to talk but are now bound. Balaam then is only able to speak the words the Lord allows to come from his mouth, which again, seems metaphorical.

• Balak, King of Moab, repeatedly tries to get Balaam to curse the Israelites — however, Balaam is constrained and can only bless them as God has.

Day 85 — Thursday, 3/26 — Numbers 25-27, Psalm 129

• Ok, as if the talking donkey wasn’t crazy enough, the Israelites quickly fall into idolatry and sexual deviance as they worshop Baal with the Moabites. God is furious and hits the Israelites with a plague — until Phinehas, Aaron’s grandson, drives a spear through an Israelite man and Midianite woman mid-act and stops it — but not before 24,000 people died.

• How do we know 24,000 people died? The census! Which they take again in the wake of this idolatrous destruction — documenting that all the Israelites of Moses and Aaron’s generation have now died off (except Caleb and Joshua), meaning the next generation can now inhabit the promised land.

• Zelophehad’s daughters challenge inheritance laws — and win. Proving that God is a feminist lol jk, He is simply just and fair.

Day 86 — Friday, 3/27 — Numbers 28-30, Psalm 130

• On the precipice of entering the promised land, Moses is given yet another dense set of sacrifice rules.

• Then vows are addressed, particularly those made by women. A father or husband can nullify them — a callback to Adam’s neglected responsibility for Eve.

Day 87 — Saturday, 3/28 — Numbers 31-33, Psalm 131

• Moses is instructed to go to war against the Midianites, as his final earthly battle to lead the Israelites to the promised land. When the Israelite leaders spare the women, Moses tells them not to, since those very women were those that followed Balaam’s teaching to seduce the Israelite men to worship Baal.

Day 88 — Sunday, 3/29 — Numbers 34-36, Psalm 132

• God maps out the promised land in detail — telling Moses the boundaries of the land they are to inhabit, and assigning territories to the tribes.

This Week

We are reading:

• Jubilees 45-50

• Numbers 1-15

• Psalms 113, 116, 117, 118, 120, 121, 123

Summary

This week we are wrapping up Jubilees’ commentary on Genesis and Exodus and returning to desert wandering in Numbers.

I think it’s really interesting to read the books of the Bible that some traditions consider in the canon and others do not. Jubilees is one of those books — in the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible, but not in the Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, or Protestant Bibles.

One of the things we tend to do in modern Christian circles — especially in America, and most especially today in an era when new age Christian gnosticism seems to have permeated much of our culture — is we try to make really black and white demarcations between what Christianity is and what it isn’t. This is a really important exercise, but it tends to leave some people in a place where they have a lot more questions than answers. And these unanswered questions can actually lead people out of the faith.

Jubilees illustrates this really well. It’s not in the canon of the Christian tradition I most closely adhere to, I don’t treat every word as gospel — but I do think the text is historically and theologically important, and I do think there may be truths it contains that are not anywhere else in the Bible.

Is it necessary for salvation? No.

Is it interesting? Sure.

And most importantly — does it contradict the Bible or lead people astray? No, it doesn’t. (There are narrative differences but they aren’t salvific.)

On to Numbers!

Numbers is the story of the Israelites journeying through the desert on their way to the Promised Land. It also contains two census’, which helps to ground these events in actual history.

Will the Israelites follow Moses willingly? Will they do as God commands? Will they complain?

Let’s find out!

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If you’d like to support us, please consider a paid subscription. Paid subscribers receive:

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Here is the daily breakdown from our annual plan:

• Day 75 — Monday, 3/16 — Jubilees 45-47, Psalm 113

• Day 76 — Tuesday, 3/17 — Jubilees 48-50, Psalm 116

• Day 77 — Wednesday, 3/18 — Numbers 1-3, Psalm 117

• Day 78 — Thursday, 3/19 — Numbers 4-6, Psalm 118

• Day 79 — Friday, 3/20 — Numbers 7-9, Psalm 120

• Day 80 — Saturday, 3/21 — Numbers 10-12, Psalm 121

• Day 81 — Sunday, 3/22 — Numbers 13-15, Psalm 123

Day 75 — Monday, 3/16 — Jubilees 45-47, Psalm 113

• Jacob learns that Joseph is alive and ruler in Egypt, God appears to Jacob and reassures him that going to Egypt is part of the divine plan, and Jacob travels to Egypt with his entire family.

• Jacob reunites with Joseph after many years apart and the family settles in the land of Goshen, where they prosper and multiply.

• Jacob blesses his twelve sons before he dies

• Then we shift to the story of Moses as we move narratively into Exodus, and the angels explain to Moses how he fits into the story thus far. Turns out, Jacobs family has prospered and multiplied a little too much for the Pharaoh’s liking.

• One interesting note in this section — Jacob gives sacred patriarchal writings to Levi to preserve and protect

Day 76 — Tuesday, 3/17 — Jubilees 48-50, Psalm 116

• Jubilees 48 has a very interesting story about Mastema (Satan) testing Moses on his way back to Egypt. Is this an explanation of the weird circumcision story in Exodus?

• The expanded Passover rules presented in Jubilees 49 are interesting

• The Sabbath rules in Jubilees 50 are more extreme than presented in Leviticus and — given how extreme the plagues were — I am somewhat inclined to believe that the original rules were this extreme

Day 77 — Wednesday, 3/18 — Numbers 1-3, Psalm 117

• Now we’re back in the books everyone agrees are canon: Numbers.

• God orders Moses to take a census of the Israelites

• God tells Moses how to organize the camps around the Tabernacle, with the Levites closest to it

Day 78 — Thursday, 3/19 — Numbers 4-6, Psalm 118

• As God lays out the duties of the Levites, we have an interesting note here that only the Gershonites may transport holy objects because if the others touch them they will die

• We are introduced to purity laws around isolation of the “unclean” — those with skin diseases, discharge, contact with a dead body, etc — to preserve health in the camp, and holiness in God’s dwelling

• We are introduced to the concept of confession as a repentance for sin

• In Numbers 5 we learn about a ritual curse administered by the preist for secretly philandering women, which I feel like should be administered to both sexes tbh

• We also learn about the Nazirite vow to consecrate oneself to the Lord, which involves avoiding wine and beer, vinegar, and anything produced by the grapevine; not cutting your hair; and avoiding contact with dead bodies. Easy peasy.

Day 79 — Friday, 3/20 — Numbers 7-9, Psalm 120

• The leaders of the twelve tribes bring dedication offerings for the Tabernacle

• The Levites are formally dedicated to serve God as priests

• The Israelites celebrate the second annual Passover

• God leads the Israelites with a cloud over the Tabernacle that appears like fire at night. Whenever the cloud moves, they move. Kind of amazing and I would love to see this.

Day 80 — Saturday, 3/21 — Numbers 10-12, Psalm 121

• God tells Moses to make two silver trumpets to signal gatherings, travel, and war

• Israel finally leaves Mount Sinai and travels towards the Promised Land

• The Israelites complain about food, even though they’re being lead by a CLOUD OF FIRE WHO PROVIDES THEIR DAILY BREAD. God sends quail as a response to their demand for meat — so much meat in fact that they will eat it for a month and have it coming out of their noses and will hate it. Oh, and He also sends a plague. Are you happy now?!

• Miriam and Aaron question Moses’ authority and Miriam is struck with leprosy for it — which turns her hand white, a known effect of fungal conditions called tinea versicolor

Day 81 — Sunday, 3/22 — Numbers 13-15, Psalm 123

• Numbers 13 sees 12 Israelite spies sent out to scout the land of Canaan, the Promised Land, and well, well, well what do they find but GIANTS.

• When the Israelites find out there are giants in Canaan, they panic and refuse to enter the Promised Land. God punishes them, saying they will wander in the wilderness for 40 years until the next generation grows some balls outgrows the sins of their fathers and inhabits the Promised Land.

Are the Israelites insufferable? Yes.

Do I also understand how frustrating it must have been to be led out of slavery to a Promised Land where you have to fight off giants?

I mean yeah, I get it.

This Week

We are reading:

• Jubilees 25-44

• Psalms 100, 102, 105, 106, 107, 111, 112

Summary

This week we are once again continuing with Genesis REDUX.

Are you guys enjoying reading this? Should I include it in the Bible study next year? This is my first year using this annual plan so let me know how it’s going for you. I feel like really digging deep into the early world helps us understand Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy — and the entire setup of the Biblical narrative — but reading the entirety of Jubilees may be too much. However, I do really like getting the names of the women, and it’s super interesting to learn the precise dates and times of everything (in jubilee years).

But let me know in the comments and the chat how you’re feeling about reading this!

This Bible study is free for everyone, made possible by the support of our paid subscribers.

If you’d like to support us, please consider a paid subscription. Paid subscribers receive:

• Full-length weekly Biblical and archaeological deep dives

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Here is the daily breakdown from our annual plan:

• Day 68 — Monday, 3/9 — Jubilees 25-27, Psalm 100

• Day 69 — Tuesday, 3/10 — Jubilees 28-30, Psalm 102

• Day 70 — Wednesday, 3/11 — Jubilees 31-33, Psalm 105

• Day 71 — Thursday, 3/12 — Jubilees 34-36, Psalm 106

• Day 72 — Friday, 3/13 — Jubilees 37-38, Psalm 107

• Day 73 — Saturday, 3/14 — Jubilees 39-41, Psalm 111

• Day 74 — Sunday, 3/15 — Jubilees 42-44, Psalm 112

Day 68 — Monday, 3/9 — Jubilees 25-27, Psalm 100

• Rebekah tells Jacob not to marry a Canaanite woman like Esau did

• Jacob steals Esau’s blessing

Day 69 — Tuesday, 3/10 — Jubilees 28-30, Psalm 102

• Jacob works for Laban for 7 years in exchange for Rachel, but is given Leah instead — and is given Rachel as originally promised when he agrees to work 7 more years

• Gilead has 15 foot tall giants whose land spreads from Mount Hermon

• The Dinah story is repeated — and we learn that she was only 12 years old

Day 70 — Wednesday, 3/11 — Jubilees 31-33, Psalm 105

• Reuben sleeps with Jacob (his dad’s) concubine Bilhah, necessitating a whole chapter of rules in Leviticus. Side note: it is written in Jubilees 33:8 that Reuben uncovered the covering of his father, the same language used in the story of Noah and Ham

Day 71 — Thursday, 3/12 — Jubilees 34-36, Psalm 106

• We get more women’s names — that of all of Jacob’s daughters-in-law

• Joseph’s brothers sell him to Potiphar and it causes immense grief in the family, resulting in the deaths of Bilhah and Dinah

• Rebekah settles things between Jacob and Esau

• Rebekah and Isaac both die

Day 72 — Friday, 3/13 — Jubilees 37-38, Psalm 107

• The Book of Jubilees’ characterization of the relationship between Jacob and Esau is quite different than Genesis, with Esau and his sons attacking Jacob after Isaac’s death, and the resulting conflict ending in Esau’s death

Day 73 — Saturday, 3/14 — Jubilees 39-41, Psalm 111

• Joseph begins his career in Egypt, becomes imprisoned due to Potiphar’s wife’s false accusations

• Joseph successfully interprets dreams

• Tamar tricks Judah, gives birth to twins, resulting in more laws handed down to Moses

Day 74 — Sunday, 3/15 — Jubilees 42-44, Psalm 112

• Joseph’s brothers come to Egypt and make a plea

• Joseph is harsh and tests them before he ultimately reveals himself

• Jacob comes to Egypt with his family

This week is kind of brief since we’ve read these stories before, but I do find the differences in the differences interesting. What do you think? Let me know in the chat and the comments below!

This Week

We are reading:

• Jubilees 4-24

• Psalms 33, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99

Summary

This week we continue our Genesis redux as we read through Jubilees.

One of the most exciting things we learn through Jubilees is the names of women, wives, sisters, daughters from Genesis.

Jubilees also gives us much more precise dates and time periods, mostly measured in “jubilees” — seven “weeks” of seven years, totaling 49 years and then followed by a jubilee year.

This Bible study is free for everyone, made possible by the support of our paid subscribers.

If you’d like to support us, please consider a paid subscription. Paid subscribers receive:

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Here is the daily breakdown from our annual plan:

• Day 61 — Monday, 3/2 — Jubilees 4-6, Psalm 33

• Day 62 — Tuesday, 3/3 — Jubilees 7-9, Psalm 94

• Day 63 — Wednesday, 3/4 — Jubilees 10-12, Psalm 95

• Day 64 — Thursday, 3/5 — Jubilees 13-15, Psalm 96

• Day 65 — Friday, 3/6 — Jubilees 16-18, Psalm 97

• Day 66 — Saturday, 3/7 — Jubilees 19-21, Psalm 98

• Day 67 — Sunday, 3/8 — Jubilees 22-24, Psalm 99
  

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Day 61 — Monday, 3/2 — Jubilees 4-6, Psalm 33

• In Jubilees 4, we get the names of Adam and Eve’s daughters — Awan and Azura. Awan becomes Cain’s wife and it’s interesting that her name means eye, or to watch (with jealosy). Azura’s name, maybe obviously, means sky blue.

• We learn that Adam and Eve had 14 total children

• We learn more names of the sister-wives: Seth has a daughter named Noam (meaning pleasantness, beauty, favor, delight), who married Enosh; they have a daughter named Mualelit (meaning God is my strength) who marries their son Kenan (or Cainan, not to be confused with Canaan).

• Enoch is introduced, once again as the inventor of writing, and the author of a book of the stars so that humans would know the seasons. Enoch’s wife is named Edni, meaning gracious or merciful. Their son Methuselah’s wife is Edna, meaning pleasure, delight, or rejuvenation. And their son Lamech marries a woman named Betanosh, who is Noah’s mom. Noah marries a woman named Emzara, which means mother of a princess or ancestor of Sarah.

• In support of the cosmic mountain idea — the angels dictating Jubilees say there are four places on earth that belong to the Lord: the Garden of Eden, the mountain of the east, Mount Sinai, and Mount Zion.

• I don’t talk about gematria much anymore because it’s too much for the masses — but Jubilees 5:22 mentions that Noah’s ark is made in the 27th jubilee of years, which is curious because 27 often represents sacrifice in our modern culture (like the 27 club)

Day 62 — Tuesday, 3/3 — Jubilees 7-9, Psalm 94

• Noah’s daughters-in-laws names are:

  • Neelatamauk (Ham’s wife) - meaning land/territory of the valley or inheritance of what is destroyed

  • Adataneses (Japheth’s wife) - meaning unclear

  • Sedeqatelebab (Shem’s wife) - meaning justice/righteousness of heart

• Kainan, grandson of Shem, finds an inscription on a rock containing the astrological, celestial, and divinatory teachings of the fallen angels — and sins, following the instruction, and showing us how the forbidden knowledge proliferated post-flood

• All the land gets divided between Noah’s sons and grandsons — and one curious note is that Kainan’s dad, Aparchshad, gets the Chaldean region which originates Chaldean numerology, probably from the inscription on the rock

Day 63 — Wednesday, 3/4 — Jubilees 10-12, Psalm 95

• Demons begin to lead astray Noah’s grandchildren. Noah asks God to intervene, and he directs the angels to imprison the demons. But then Mastema (which means enmity, and is another name for Satan) claims he cannot exert free will with the demons imprisoned. God allows 10% of nephilim spirits to remain on earth as demons, while 9/10ths are cast down in judgment.

• Noah is taught by the angels how to combat the diseases inflicted upon humanity by demons using the plants of the earth, he writes down a book of herbology and passes it down to Shem.

• Abram is born to Terah, who worships idols. We get an interesting backstory for Abra(ha)m — he chastises his dad for worshipping idols and one night secretly sets fire to the temple of idols. God calls Abram to go to a new land — and imparts unto him the language of Hebrew, which had been lost at the tower of Babel.

Day 64 — Thursday, 3/5 — Jubilees 13-15, Psalm 96

• We get a retelling of Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac — but it’s not nearly as funny as Genesis.

• In Jubilees 15:31 we learn that God has “made spirits rule over all in order to lead them astray from following him” — which bolsters the notion of territorial spirits

Day 65 — Friday, 3/6 — Jubilees 16-18, Psalm 97

• In Jubilees 16, Sarah laughs and we learn about Sodom and Gomorrah again, as well as the judgment on Lot’s unholy descendants

• In this commentary on the near-sacrifice of Isaac, we learn that God was proving a point about Abraham’s faithfulness to shame Satan (Mastema). So now it’s a Job redux!

Day 66 — Saturday, 3/7 — Jubilees 19-21, Psalm 98

• Abraham gives his final plea and warning to his family against worshipping idols and keeping God’s covenant

Day 67 — Sunday, 3/8 — Jubilees 22-24, Psalm 99

• The ages of humans have reduced due to sinfulness, to 70-80 years — but Jubilees describes a time in which the children will seek to restore faithfulness to God’s commands and will increase the lifespans again to 1000 years, or more

• Esau trades his birthright for lentil porridge and it doesn’t sound any less ridiculous the second time around

What came up for you this week? Join us in the Jubilees chat to discuss!

This Week

We are reading:

• Leviticus 10-27

• Jubilees 1-3

• Psalms 87, 88, 90, 91, 92, 93, 10

Summary

This week we finish Leviticus. Some people find Leviticus boring and this is the book where a lot of people committed to reading the Bible in a year fall off.

But not the Good Book Club!

Leviticus is nuts, you guys. We’ve got multiple Moloch references. We’ve got God having to spell out to the Israelites that they are not to sacrifice their children or have sex with their moms. We’ve got the return of Azazel, the head of the watchers from the Book of Enoch, receiving the scapegoat in the wilderness in the origin of Yom Kippur.

In my (un)professional opinion, Leviticus is where God is laying out the laws of organizing an utterly chaotic and sinful world, finding a safe way to dwell with humans, and charting a path for returning humanity to holiness. Will the Israelites survive this?!

The late Dr. Michael Heiser (famous for reintroducing the cosmic worldview to modern audiences) thought Leviticus was an incredibly supernatural book that evolved out of the events of Genesis 6 — reaffirming and reestablishing the boundaries around humanity’s holiness in the wake of corruption from fallen angels. He hosted The Naked Bible podcast, an excellent resource that dives very deep into scripture with a cosmic worldview.

And then we begin Jubilees, which is commonly referred to a little Genesis — but with more detail. I am so excited for a Genesis REDUX!!!

But I also want to forewarn you a bit that everyone is gonna need to get real cool about a bunch of stuff really quickly. Jubilees elaborates on the stories told in Genesis and adds details that many of us have never heard before. It also differs slightly from Genesis in perspective. But not really in major ways.

Jubilees is likely the first ever commentary on Genesis and parts of Exodus.

Jubilees is only considered canonical in the Ethiopian Orthodox church. However, it is historically relevant, and many church fathers did treat it as scripture or close to it — because remember, most of the church fathers were operating from the perspective of having dozens of scrolls that were relevant for different educational purposes and they weren’t so black and white about what was “in” and “out” because they didn’t have a singular printed book of the Bible. I think some people think if a book isn’t in the Bible it’s heretical, but that’s not true — it’s simply not considered AS important.

The Book of Jubilees is not nearly as “out there” as the Book of Enoch though, so I think this group is going to have fun reading this book and comparing some details to the stories in Genesis.

If you don’t have a copy of the Book of Jubilees, you can find it online here.

Merch Store Revamp

Heads up that the Capitalism & Glitter Merch Store is undergoing a change in the pricing structure in March, which will increase prices by a few dollars. If you have been eyeing a sweatshirt or any other products, now is the time to buy at the lowest prices we will ever offer.

We will also be launching new products, so be on the lookout for that!

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If you’d like to support us, please consider a paid subscription. Paid subscribers receive:

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Here is the daily breakdown from our annual plan:

• Day 54 — Monday, 2/23 — Leviticus 10-12, Psalm 87

• Day 55 — Tuesday, 2/24 — Leviticus 13-15, Psalm 88

• Day 56 — Wednesday, 2/25 — Leviticus 16-18, Psalm 90

• Day 57 — Thursday, 2/26 — Leviticus 19-21, Psalm 91

• Day 58 — Friday, 2/27 — Leviticus 22-24, Psalm 92

• Day 59 — Saturday, 2/28 — Leviticus 25-27, Psalm 93

• Day 60 — Sunday, 3/1 — Jubilees 1-3, Psalm 10

Day 54 — Monday, 2/23 — Leviticus 10-12, Psalm 87

• Starting off with a bang — after being explicitly told how to prepare a fire fit for God, Aaron’s sons offer some sort of “unholy” or “unauthorized” fire to the Lord, and are immediately consumed by God’s fiery presence. At first glance, this story may seem harsh for what seems to be a minor offense (killed for the wrong kind of fire?) — but when you dig into the original Hebrew and the background of this story, it sounds like the boys may have been making a forbidden pagan fire, possibly using knowledge that humans shouldn’t have had.

• The unclean animals are really interesting — they are scavengers, carnivores, and bottom-feeders who tend to eat decaying meat or other animals (i.e. vultures) — meaning they are riddled with parasites, diseases, and toxins harmful to human health. I wonder if the unclean animals resulted from the watchers sinning against animals as we learned in Genesis and Enoch.

Day 55 — Tuesday, 2/24 — Leviticus 13-15, Psalm 88

• Chapters 13 and 14 of Leviticus deal with mold in houses and leprosy, a condition clearly associated with mold illness. We dive deep into these chapters in our article coming out on Wednesday detailing how the Bible associates leprosy with mold illness, and outlining a biblical approach to remediating mold.

Day 56 — Wednesday, 2/25 — Leviticus 16-18, Psalm 90

• The things God has to spell out in Leviticus 18 are absolutely insane to me. “Don’t do what they do in Canaan — don’t sacrifice your children to demons, for that is a bad thing to do. Don’t have sex with your mom, for she is your mom. Don’t have sex with animals, because that’s disgusting. And you know what, let me just go ahead and list all the other family members you shouldn’t have sex with because it seems unclear to some of you.”

• In Leviticus 16, in the origin of Yom Kippur, we learn that Azazel, head of the Watchers, is somewhere out in the wilderness and the word scapegoat is a reference to a goat that carries the sins of Israel out into the wilderness to Azazel

• Another interesting point in Leviticus 17:11 is that “the life of the body is in the blood”

Day 57 — Thursday, 2/26 — Leviticus 19-21, Psalm 91

• The direction in Leviticus 19 not to breed two kinds of animals, not to mix two kinds of seeds, not to mix two things together is a clear callback to Genesis 6 and the forbidden mixing of species. It’s also inspiring me to keep sticking to 100% cotton and linen in my postpartum wardrobe overhaul.

• I think we should bring back the laws of Leviticus 20.

Day 58 — Friday, 2/27 — Leviticus 22-24, Psalm 92

• Leviticus 23 outlines God’s holy appointed feasts, structured seasonally — and foreshadowing Jesus

• Leviticus 24 lays out laws designed to prevent disproportionate revenge, which we’ve seen play out before (e.g. Genesis 34).

Day 59 — Saturday, 2/28 — Leviticus 25-27, Psalm 93

• Leviticus 25 talks about Jubilees, discusses the calendar, and emphasizes a rhythm that includes rest to recalibrate and support all aspects of life.

• The idea that God owns the land and Israel are the tenants is quite radical, as are the other ideas outlined about economic fairness and equity — God explicitly forbids usury, or lending money at high rates.

Day 60 — Sunday, 3/1 — Jubilees 1-3, Psalm 10

• In Jubilees 1, God predicts how the Israelites will violate the laws of the covenant resulting in their exile — however, they will be restored in the future. Moses is like… couldn’t you just restore us now? But God says NOPE.

• Jubilees 2 discusses the natural laws of the world God created as a retelling of Genesis 1-2 — most interesting note here may be that great sea monsters were God’s first “fleshly” productions

• Jubilees 2-3 are a retelling of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden — and the most interesting notes here are that Adam and Eve lived in the Garden for 7 years until they sinned, and all the animals used to be able to talk.

Update on the chats — the chats have calmed down a bit so I am starting a new chat for each book. We’ll see how that goes. The Leviticus chat is open now and I will start the Jubilees chat this week. Thanks for being flexible as the chats evolve!

This Week

We are reading:

• Exodus 31-40

• Leviticus 1-9

• Psalms 115, 80, 81, 2, 83, 84, 85

Summary

This week we continue Exodus and we get a lot of interaction between God and Moses on the top of Mount Sinai. The mountains are often used as a meeting place between Heaven and Earth.

The Israelites are impatient, tempestuous, and weak. Honestly, I used to have a harder time understanding God in the Old Testament, but reading it now I get it. They’re so annoying! These people were just rescued from centuries of slavery to the Egyptians and they can’t go 5 minutes without complaining, and then they build a golden cow?!

Maybe becoming a parent has helped me understand how the depths of both love and wrath can coexist in the same moment.

Fortunately, Moses redeems the Israelites and intercedes on their behalf with God — foreshadowing Jesus. They build the Tabernacle, precisely according to God’s instructions, showing they can follow directions… when they feel like it.

The Tabernacle stands in place of the mountain as a meeting place of heaven and earth. It is akin to a mini-Eden, a place where God dwells among humans. Other parallels between Eden and the Tabernacle include the east-facing entrance guarded by cherubim, the gold, the tree of life (lampstand), and the tree of knowledge (the law). In the Old Testament, God dwells in the Tabernacle, but in the New Testament, Jesus becomes the true Tabernacle.

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After we wrap up Exodus this week, we are beginning Leviticus. For now that we again have a dwelling place for the Lord here on Earth, we need to understand the rules around His holy dwelling.

While Leviticus has a reputation for being boring, this book is important for laying out in detail the ordinary management of sin. God, in all His holiness, is working out a way to dwell with a humanity that has become downtrodden by sin.

One thing to note at the outset of Leviticus is that “unclean” (Hebrew: tamei) doesn’t necessarily mean sinful—it means ritually impure. We’ll see that contact with carcasses, certain animals, or bodily fluids required washing and waiting until evening to become clean — a consequence of unholiness permeating earth and being in physical conflict with holiness, Heaven, and God Himself.

Lent

I’ve been asked to incorporate some more primers on Christianity in general as we continue reading through the Bible. Last week I provided a general overview of the Sacraments, and this week I’m covering Lent — which starts Wednesday, February 18.

Lent is the season of fasting, prayer, and repentance observed by many Christians during the 40 days leading up to Easter. It is a commemoration of Jesus’ 40 days of fasting in the wilderness before beginning His public ministry, which we will discuss when we get to the New Testament.

The practice developed in the early Church as a period of preparation for catechumens (those studying to be Christian) before baptism at Easter, and later became a broader penitential season for all believers. Today it is formally observed in traditions such as the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, and many Protestant communities.

The number forty carries deep biblical symbolism of testing, purification, and transformation:

• 40 days and nights of rain during the flood (Book of Genesis 7:12)

• Moses fasting 40 days on Mount Sinai (Book of Exodus 34:28)

• Elijah’s 40-day journey to Horeb (First Book of Kings 19:8)

• Israel’s 40 years in the wilderness (Book of Numbers 14:33–34)

Lent symbolically places believers in the wilderness with Jesus, stripping away distractions so that the resurrection joy of Easter may be received with renewed depth.

How to Practice Lent

Here are some practical ways you can engage in Lent to meaningfully deepen your faith. Consider practicing a few of the following:

• Attend a service or mass on Ash Wednesday (February 18th) and receive ashes on your forehead

• Pray more

  • Set a daily prayer time

  • Continue reading the Bible in a year!

• Fast

  • Skip meat on Fridays (fish is ok)

  • Engage in healthy fasting

  • Give up something that creates comfort (social media, sweets/chocolate, alcohol, entertainment, etc.)

• Practice almsgiving

  • Give to or serve those in need

• Repent

  • Examine your conscience intentionally

  • Confess specific sins (to a priest or God directly)

Daily Summaries

Here is the daily breakdown from our annual plan:

• Day 47 — Monday, 2/16 — Exodus 31-33, Psalm 115

• Day 48 — Tuesday, 2/17 — Exodus 34-36, Psalm 80

• Day 49 — Wednesday, 2/18 — Exodus 37-38, Psalm 81

• Day 50 — Thursday, 2/19 — Exodus 39-40, Psalm 2

• Day 51 — Friday, 2/20 — Leviticus 1-3, Psalm 83

• Day 52 — Saturday, 2/21 — Leviticus 4-6, Psalm 84

• Day 53 — Sunday, 2/22 — Leviticus 7-9, Psalm 85

Day 47 — Monday, 2/16 — Exodus 31-33, Psalm 115

• Bezalel (from the tribe of Judah) and Oholiab (from the tribe of Dan) are filled with the Spirit of God for artistic craftsmanship — which is the first explicit mention of someone being Spirit-filled for creativity, not prophecy or warfare. We were made in His image to be creative ✨

• Moses meets with God on the top of Mount Sinai and is gone for 40 days. The Israelites freak out and demand Aaron create a new god to lead them out of the wilderness, and he makes a golden calf.

• God is SO PISSED, and rightfully so. Moses intercedes, foreshadowing Jesus. The covenant tablets are literally and symbolically shattered.

• We have a weird scene in which Moses asks to see God and is only shown His “hind parts” because no one can see His face and live. It’s pretty clear through this and other scenes that there is a scientific reason that we cannot survive seeing God’s face or being directly in His presence — as though our very DNA has been sinfully corrupted from the beginning.

Day 48 — Tuesday, 2/17 — Exodus 34-36, Psalm 80

• New tablets are made as God renews the covenant with His chosen people who can’t follow simple instructions

• As the Israelites set out to wander across the desert to the Promised Land, God warns Moses not to make treaties with any of the people groups they will meet along the way. He warns that if they do make treaties, they will end up marrying their sons off to foreign daughters, who worship pagan gods — I wonder if this will come up again later?!

• Moses comes back down Mount Sinai with the stone tablets carved with the Ten Commandments and his face is shining from having spend 40 days and nights with God.

• Bezalel and Oholiab lead the construction of the Tabernacle. While this chapter seems repetitive to the earlier Tabernacle building instructions, it shows that the Israelites can follow instructions — when they want to.

Day 49 — Wednesday, 2/18 — Exodus 37-38, Psalm 81

• The Israelites build the Ark of the Covenant (which sits above the law), the Table of Showbread (representing communion), the Lampstand, the Altar of Incense, the Altar of Burnt Offering (at the entrance to the Tabernacle, where access to God begins with a sacrifice), the Washbasin, and the Courtyard.

Day 50 — Thursday, 2/19 — Exodus 39-40, Psalm 2

• Bezalel makes the ephod and the breastpiece with 12 gemstones (one for each tribe).

• God descends down the mountain and His presence fills the completed Tabernacle in the form of a cloud. He continues to dwell with Israel in the Tabernacle along their journey, appearing as a cloud during the day and at night appearing with fire inside.

Day 51 — Friday, 2/20 — Leviticus 1-3, Psalm 83

• In our introduction to Leviticus, we learn about the burnt offering, the grain offering, and the peace offering.

Day 52 — Saturday, 2/21 — Leviticus 4-6, Psalm 84

• Next we learn about sin offerings (covering unintentional sins) and guilt offerings. For even if our sin is unintentional, it requires atonement. Ignorance does not negate impact.

• Blood is used regularly as a cleansing mediator, as it contains life and purifies the contamination of death.

Day 53 — Sunday, 2/22 — Leviticus 7-9, Psalm 85

• Moses washes, clothes, anoints, and consecrates Aaron and his sons. He applies blood to their right ear (anointing what they hear), right thumb (anointing what they touch), and right big toe (anointing where they walk).

• Aaron then offers sacrifices for himself, then the people, and God consumes the sacrifices as a divine fire of approval.

As we wrap up this week, I want to just meditate for a moment on the thought of a massively powerful God, greater than any of the other gods they’ve ever seen performing their little magic tricks in Egypt. God dwells with them night and day in a Tabernacle they regularly throw up, tear down, and carry with them through the desert — appearing as a cloud by day, a fiery cloud by night, and divine fire approval when they get the sacrifices right.

Wow.

…let’s read on to find out if they continue disobedience in the face of an immensely powerful God!

This Week

We are reading:

• Exodus 10-30

• Psalm 114, 77, 78, 79, 119

Summary

We’re continuing the story of Exodus this week, and God repeatedly hardens Pharaoh’s heart for the plot.

Pharaoh continues going back and forth about letting God’s people go. The plagues culminate in the Passover origin story. Pharaoh finally decides to release the Israelites, who begin the exodus out of Egypt, when he changes his mind again and chases after them — culminating in Moses’ infamous parting of the Red Sea, which allows the Israelites to escape while, at the last minute, the waves crash down and wipe out the Egyptian army.

The Israelites then wander in the wilderness, where they IMMEDIATELY complain about being freed from slavery. God provides water and food in the form of manna and quail. He reveals Himself to Moses at Mount Sinai, delivering the Ten Commandments, and establishing the laws that shape Israel’s moral, social, and religious life. God’s covenent expands the people formally enter into covenant with God, and detailed instructions are given for building the tabernacle, its furnishings, and the priesthood, emphasizing that the God who saved them intends to dwell among them and be worshiped according to His holiness.

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The Sacraments

Exodus begins to foreshadow the sacraments.

The sacraments are sacred Christian rites, which are considered to be representative of God.

Different traditions hold different beliefs about the sacraments. In a nutshell, Catholic and Orthodox traditions believe the sacraments confer God’s grace, whereas Protestants believe they are symbolic acts of obedience. Simply put, in the former tradition, sacraments confer action by God, and in the latter sacraments are an action taken by a believer.

Catholic and Orthodox traditions have 7 sacraments, and Protestants only recognize 2 (numbers 1 and 3 on this list):

1. Baptism — Entry into the Christian life; washes away sin and makes you part of God’s family and begins a new life in Christ

2. Confirmation —Strengthening of baptismal grace; seals you with the Holy Spirit and gives spiritual strength to live the faith publicly

3. Eucharist (Holy Communion or the Lord’s Supper) — The Body and Blood of Christ; nourishes the soul and unites believers with Jesus and each other

4. Reconciliation (Confession) — God’s forgiveness after sin; restores relationship with God and brings healing and peace

5. Anointing of the Sick — Prayer and anointing for the ill or suffering; brings spiritual (and sometimes physical) healing; gives strength in illness or near death

6. Holy Orders — Ordination for service and leadership; configures a man to Christ as deacon, priest, or bishop and serves the Church sacramentally

7. Matrimony (Marriage) — A lifelong covenant between spouses; makes God’s love visible through faithful love, and gives grace to live out marriage

They are often grouped as follows:

• Sacraments of Initiation: Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist

• Sacraments of Healing: Reconciliation, Anointing of the Sick

• Sacraments of Service: Holy Orders, Matrimony

All of the sacraments come out of the New Testament and the story of Jesus, however, as with Jesus Himself, we see a lot of foreshadowing in the Old Testament of the sacraments to come.

As we continue reading Exodus this week, we can see that Moses parting the Red Sea is a foreshadowing of baptism, leaving slavery for a new life ahead. As well, the manna that rains down to provide the Israelites with daily bread is a foreshadowing of the Eucharist.

Here is the daily breakdown from our annual plan:

• Day 40 — Monday, 2/9 — Exodus 10-12, Psalm 114

• Day 41 — Tuesday, 2/10 — Exodus 13-15, Psalm 77

• Day 42 — Wednesday, 2/11 — Exodus 16-18, Psalm 78

• Day 43 — Thursday, 2/12 — Exodus 19-21, Psalm 79

• Day 44 — Friday, 2/13 — Exodus 22-24, Psalm 119:1-56

• Day 45 — Saturday, 2/14 — Exodus 25-27, Psalm 119:57-88

• Day 46 — Sunday, 2/15 — Exodus 28-30, Psalm 119:89-177

Day 40 — Monday, 2/9 — Exodus 10-12, Psalm 114

• God sends the last plagues on Egypt: locusts and darkness, then the devastating death of the firstborn.

• God institutes the Passover, marking Israel’s doors with lamb’s blood so death “passes over” them.

• Pharaoh finally lets the Israelites go.

• Israel leaves Egypt after 400+ years of slavery, carrying gold and silver from the Egyptians.

Day 41 — Tuesday, 2/10 — Exodus 13-15, Psalm 77

• Moses takes Joseph’s bones with him as they leave Egypt.

• God leads them with a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night.

• Pharaoh changes his mind and pursues Israel.

• God parts the Red Sea — Israel crosses safely, and the waves crash down before the Egyptian army can make it to the other side, destroying them.

• Moses and the people sing a song of victory.

Day 42 — Wednesday, 2/11 — Exodus 16-18, Psalm 78

• Following this miraculous freedom from Egypt, the Israelites immediately begin complaining about Moses, Aaron, saying they were better off as slaves of Egypt than they are wandering in the wilderness. They had owned nothing, and they were happy.

• God provides water, manna, and quail to eat. Moses is instructed to strike a rock to draw water, and manna rained down onto the ground and was collected each morning.

• Israel defeats the Amalekites with God’s help.

• Moses’ father-in-law Jethro witnesses Moses taking common complaints from 9 to 5 every day and advises him to delegate leadership.

Day 43 — Thursday, 2/12 — Exodus 19-21, Psalm 79

• Israel arrives at Mount Sinai.

• God reveals His presence with thunder, fire, and smoke. (Yet another instance of mythology copying God when the secular world claims it’s the other way around.)

• God gives the Ten Commandments and additional laws are given about justice, worship, and daily life.

  • God instructs the Israelites how to build an altar — and explicitly tells them not to build idols out of silver or gold.

• God gives a lot of rules about how to handle slavery. It’s uncomfortable for a modern reader, but it’s important to read this was clearly a very different time, with God’s people still recovering in a fallen world.

Day 44 — Friday, 2/13 — Exodus 22-24, Psalm 119:1-56

• God continues laying out rules that don’t make sense to us in modern times, but we have to remember that there was basically no moral code at this time. God literally had to tell them not to exploit widows and orphans.

• God makes a formal covenant with Israel; the people agree to obey and eat a meal with God. This covenant differs from the covenant with Abraham in that it does require that the people follow the laws given in order to receive bestowed blessings.

• Moses ascends Mount Sinai to receive further instructions.

  

Day 45 — Saturday, 2/14 — Exodus 25-27, Psalm 119:57-88

• God gives detailed instructions for building the Tabernacle, where He will dwell among His people. Descriptions include the Ark of the Covenant, the Table of Showbread, the Golden Lampstand, the altar, courtyard, and olive oil to keep the lamps perpetually burning

• I often neglect the Psalms and Proverbs in my weekly write-ups in favor of discussing the narrative in the main books we are reading — but this week we are reading the longest chapter in the Bible, Psalm 119. It is an alphabetic acrostic, with 22 sections (one for each Hebrew letter), 8 verses per section, and every verse in the section starting with the same Hebrew letter. This chapter is a way of saying: “From A to Z, all of life is meant to be shaped by God’s Word.” And, man, the author of this Psalm was going through it.

Day 46 — Sunday, 2/15 — Exodus 28-30, Psalm 119:89-177

• God establishes the priesthood with Aaron and his sons.

• Fun Fact! The chestpiece adorned with rows of gemstones is the basis for birthstones. (To be clear, I’m not saying birthstones are biblical, but I am saying they have a biblical origin.)

• Instructions are given to use myrrh, cinnamon, calamus (which is apparently a psychoactive herb used for medicine that is banned in the US 👀), and cassia to make incense and an anointing oil. Further instruction is given to make incense.

While a lot of the rules being laid out in Exodus seem excessive and specific, after what we’ve read in the Book of Enoch, I think the reason for the focus on holiness and order makes a lot of sense for establishing God’s closeness to His people of Israel.

Extra credit: Watch The Promised Land — a laugh-out-loud mockumentary in the style of The Office following the Israelites out of Egypt.

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This Week

We are reading:

• Job 40-42

• Enoch 72-82

• Exodus 1-9

• Psalm 50, 53, 71, 73-76

If you don’t have a hard copy of the Book of Enoch, you can find it online here.

Summary

We’re making our way through three books this week — wrapping up Job, taking another trip to the stars with Enoch, and then beginning the journey of Moses’ Exodus out of Egypt.

Job repents, admits his insignificance and how little he knows in the face of God, and is ultimately rewarded with the doubling of his riches and a long life — seeing the fruition of four generations of his progeny.

But in the end, Job is rewarded not just with the reinstatement of his material possessions and family — Job’s greatest reward is his relationship with God.

And on the heels of Job and the references to the heavenly court, we’re taking a few days to read Enoch’s detailed journey to the stars in 1 Enoch 72-82 — a section commonly referred to as The Book of the Luminaries or The Astronomical Book. The first Book of Enoch is actually 5 separate books or sections that were all written at different times, and this astronomical section was likely written second, after The Book of the Watchers.

What we learn in this section is paramount to understanding space, astrology, and our place within “the universe.” We learn that the stars are for timekeeping, and when humans sin the calendar gets corrupted — begging the question, is the very function of the universe in disarray since the fall of mankind? Did we bring the sun and the moon and the stars down with us?

And then we’re moving right along to start Exodus.

We meet Moses, Moses meets God. God tells Moses he has heard the cries of the Israelites and will deliver them with Moses’ help. Moses, like many Biblical protagonists, struggles with his calling — but God ensures his promises will be fulfilled.

When Moses approaches Pharaoh to “let my people go,” Pharaoh refuses — which does NOT go well for him. The plagues begin, and an interesting article out of Rice university details that each plague is a direct response to a specific Egyptian god.

The Book of Exodus begins to reveal once again that salvation comes from God’s faithfulness to us and not the other way around.

Here is the daily breakdown from our annual plan:

• Day 33 — Monday, 2/2 — Job 40-42, Psalm 50

• Day 34 — Tuesday, 2/3 — Enoch 72-74, Psalm 53

• Day 35 — Wednesday, 2/4 — Enoch 75-78, Psalm 71

• Day 36 — Thursday, 2/5 — Enoch 79-82, Psalm 73

• Day 37 — Friday, 2/6 — Exodus 1-3, Psalm 74

• Day 38 — Saturday, 2/7 — Exodus 4-6, Psalm 75

• Day 39 — Sunday, 2/8 — Exodus 7-9, Psalm 76

Day 33 — Monday, 2/2 — Job 40-42, Psalm 50

• We wrap up Job with an entire chapter of God detailing the leviathan, an insane sounding sea creature that he is describing with such detail that you know this just has to be real. Sounding at once like a dragon, a dinosaur, and the loch ness monster, I cannot help but wonder what this creature actually was and where it went (or if it’s even actually disappeared).

• Job responds with humility, because of course he does. He’s now face-to-face with God, who is describing an INSANE creature — not as a metaphor but as indication of His immense power to create such a chaotic and powerful being, as well as the entire universe.

• Most importantly — God doesn’t tell Job why he has suffered. He does not give us a why, He just impresses us with His presence and knowledge — showing us that He is greater than our tiny human brains can ever understand.

Day 34 — Tuesday, 2/3 — Enoch 72-74, Psalm 53

• Uriel takes Enoch on a tour of the stars, and today we learn about the Sun and the Moon.

• Enoch describes the sun as seven times brighter than the moon — a fact repeated in Isaiah, but one that differs from our modern scientific measurements of the sun’s brightness.

• Enoch also notes the sun and the moon are the exact same size — which is true from our perspective on earth, and is how eclipses work. This is one of the facts that dragged me off the agnostic fence because what are the chances that the sun and the moon are EXACTLY the same size from the perspective of earth, without being intentionally designed that way by a Creator?

• We also learn the basis for the 364 day solar calendar, and it’s important to understand that when this was likely written it was set upon the backdrop of Jerusalem using a lunar calendar.

35 — Wednesday, 2/4 — Enoch 75-78, Psalm 71

• We learn about the gates in the sky, from which all the winds on earth emerge in different directions — as well as rain, dew, mist, hail, snow, prosperity, life, locusts, and destruction. Are there any meteorologists in the Good Book Club? Because honestly, I’m gonna need your take on this section.

• Today we learn the names of the sun and the moon and their operations — which is direct push back on paganism and astrology because it details that the sun and moon were named by God, and have roles given by God before humans even existed. Unlike in paganism and astrology, the sun and the moon do not act independently.

Day 36 — Thursday, 2/5 — Enoch 79-82, Psalm 73

• Enoch quickly shifts from taking us on a tour of the stars to telling us that the fall of man has confused the calendar, that in the days of sinners the sun and the moon will not appear at their appointed times, and that following the wrong calendar causes us to sin even more. Is this why we have a 365.25 day year, rather than the 364 day year God designed?

• 1 Enoch 80:7 is a clear and firm rebuke of astrology as divination. Reading destiny in the stars is not cosmic wisdom. It’s theological error, mistaking a demarcation of order for a source of authority on human behavior. God’s intelligently designed cosmological order is not an oracle dictating our fate — it’s a clock.

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• This section ends with the angels telling Enoch to write down the knowledge he has been given to pass down to his son Methuselah, Noah’s grandfather — and the oldest person to ever have lived — so that he can pass this knowledge down for generations to come.

Day 37 — Friday, 2/6 — Exodus 1-3, Psalm 74

• We’re now back in the days after Abraham, and Israel has indeed multiplied. So much so that their numbers threaten Pharoah, and Joseph’s deeds are long forgotten.

• Pharoah orders the death of the first born male of all Hebrews, but midwives become secret saviors who surreptitiously refuse to follow orders.

• We are introduced to Moses — author and main character of much of the Torah, the first 5 books of the Bible. We are working on a future article compiling the historical evidence for Moses — stay tuned!

• God reveals Himself in the infamous burning bush. He has heard the cry of His people, and has tapped Moses to lead them to the promised land — the land of milk and honey (new candle scent idea just dropped).

• Moses, as with nearly everyone with a divine mission, questions his worthiness to lead the people of Israel. And God’s just like — don’t worry about it, I’ll make it happen and you’ll plunder Egypt.

Day 38 — Saturday, 2/7 — Exodus 4-6, Psalm 75

• Moses continues to doubt God’s plan, concerned he won’t be believed. God performs a series of miraculous signs and insists he will make the people listen, using Moses’ brother, Aaron, as a mouthpiece.

• Moses and Aaron speak with Pharaoh, telling him to let God’s people go — Pharaoh refuses, doubles the Israelites workload.

Day 39 — Sunday, 2/8 — Exodus 7-9, Psalm 76

• God hardens Pharaoh’s heart, granting Himself an opportunity to display His power.

• God turns Aaron’s staff to a serpent; Pharaoh calls his own sorcerers to turn their staffs to snakes — but Aaron’s snake eats theirs. Pharaoh remains unconvinced, so…

• The plagues begin: the Nile turns to blood, frogs overrun Egypt, lice infest people and animals, swarms of flies cover the land, Egyptian livestock die while Israelites’ livestock are spared, boils afflict Egyptians. Each time Pharaoh relents and begs for mercy, then changes his mind when the plague has ended.

Will Pharaoh’s heart be softened? Will his repentance turn into true submission to God? Tune in next week to find out! (But don’t hold your breath.)

Extra credit: Watch The Prince of Egypt — an animated children’s film about Moses

Whoops — this week’s article got long again! What can I say, I’ve got a lot of thoughts about the Bible.

Share your thoughts in the comments below and in the chat!

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This Week

We are reading:

• Job 13-39

• Psalm 17, 44-49

Note: If you have fallen behind in the reading, do not despair! Simply jump in to where we are today. If you start the readings at any point this week, all you need to know is that Job is having a bad time despite being a good guy.

Pro-tip: If you’re having trouble keeping up, there is an audiobook version of the Bible available in the youversion Bible app!

Summary

What a week for Job.

Many people find the Book of Job a difficult and frustrating read. The first time I read Job was in the depths of my health crisis. Some might say it’s ill-advised to read Job during a period of your life when you, too, have lost your health and the support of your friends — but honestly, there’s truly no better time to gain wisdom from the lessons in Job. And ultimately, it helped me with some of the bigger questions I was grappling with around God.

The Book of Job refuses to offer the kind of moral clarity we all instinctively want. Job’s suffering feels unwarranted and excessive, his arguments appear abrasive and disrespectful, and God’s silence can seem evasive and frustrating.

The story of Job defies cause-and-effect theology. Job is not secretly wicked, and we do not get a clear resolution or explanation for his plight, no matter how much his friends try to place fault with him.

The book of Job demands that the reader suffer alongside Job in order to gain the wisdom of these circumstances.

The lesson here is not instructional, but formative: we can trust in God when we lack understanding. We can lament our circumstances while remaining faithful. Divine wisdom exceeds human understanding.

The Book of Job is not about why bad things happen to good people.

The Book of Job is about whether God can be trusted when the world stops making sense.

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Here is the daily breakdown from our annual plan:

• Day 26 — Monday, 1/26 — Job 13-16, Psalm 17

• Day 27 — Tuesday, 1/27 — Job 17-20, Psalm 44

• Day 28 — Wednesday, 1/28 — Job 21-24, Psalm 45

• Day 29 — Thursday, 1/29 — Job 25-28, Psalm 46

• Day 30 — Friday, 1/30 — Job 29-32, Psalm 47

• Day 31 — Saturday, 1/31 — Job 33-36, Psalm 48

• Day 32 — Sunday, 2/1 — Job 37-39, Psalm 48

Day 26 — Monday, 1/26 — Job 13-16, Psalm 17

• Job wants to take God to court.

Day 27 — Tuesday, 1/27 — Job 17-20, Psalm 44

• Jobs friends double-down, continuing to insist that Job must have done something to deserve this; Job tells them their attitude deserves punishment.

Day 28 — Wednesday, 1/28 — Job 21-24, Psalm 45

• Job’s irritation with his friends grow, as does mine. Job asks why wicked people are not punished while he, a righteous man, despairs.

Day 29 — Thursday, 1/29 — Job 25-28, Psalm 46

• Job embarks on his final speech.

Day 30 — Friday, 1/30 — Job 29-32, Psalm 47

• Job continues his final protest of innocence.

Day 31 — Saturday, 1/31 — Job 33-36, Psalm 48

• Finally, one of Job’s friends — who has been silent until now — rebukes Job’s friends for blaming Job for his circumstances. He’s also mad at Job for the way he is accusing God of injustice. He is the first to point out that God can speak through suffering.

Day 32 — Sunday, 2/1 — Job 37-39, Psalm 48

• God shows up in the form of a storm — with more questions rather than answers. He speaks from the whirlwind:

• In Job 38:7, we once again have bene elohim — Hebrew for “sons of God,” consistently understood to mean angels in this verse.

• Note: God’s voice is described as thunder, and his presence is from within a storm—this story may be why nearly every subsequent mythology has a storm and/or thunder god. They are often dragon/serpent slayers. But I’m sure it’s just a coincidence and all these myths developed independently, apropos of nothing.

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Next week we will wrap up Job, catch back up with Enoch’s exploration of the cosmos, and start our journey out of Egypt.

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We are reading:

• Genesis 36-50

• Job 1-12

• Proverbs 3:25-35, Proverbs 4:1-27, Psalm 16

Summary

We’re wrapping up our first full book of the Bible this week!

And WHAT a wild ride Genesis has been.

I think Genesis is my favorite book of the Bible.

It’s the Bible for people who like Bravo.

This book has EVERYTHING. And it sets up and ties together so much world history.

Genesis. New York’s hottest ancient book has everything.

Light fighting with darkness, a VIP section called the firmament, and two nudist vegans living in a luxury garden, where the dress code is nothing and the only rule is, ‘Don’t eat off-menu.’

God said — ‘Let there be light,’ and ‘Let’s make people… emotionally unprepared.’

There’s a farm-to-table sibling rivalry between two brothers, angels coming down from heaven like, ‘Hey, you up?’, and a global flood rave with one boat, two of every animal, and a 600-year-old man who’s basically a nautical doomsday prepper.

Genesis: it’s like the Bible said, ‘Let there be mess,’ and it was good.

And then we’re introduced to Job.

Job’s story tells us a lot about the structure of the physical and spiritual world in heaven and on earth, the nature of relationships between God and Satan and humans, that suffering is not simply a divine punishment, and that God doesn’t answer all of our questions in this lifetime. Wisdom lies in recognizing the limits of human understanding.

The Old Testament is organized into 4 main sections: Law, History, Wisdom, and Prophets. The Book of Job is in the Wisdom section of the Bible, so we’re jumping to the middle of the Bible, but since we are approaching this reading chronologically, Job’s is the story that’s next. Most scholars agree that, given his long life, Job likely lived around the same time as Abraham — definitely after the flood yet before Moses, and possibly even a bit before Abraham.

Here is the daily breakdown from our annual plan:

• Day 19 — Monday, 1/19 — Genesis 36-39, Proverbs 3:25-27

• Day 20 — Tuesday, 1/20 — Genesis 40-43, Proverbs 3:28-32

• Day 21 — Wednesday, 1/21 — Genesis 44-47, Proverbs 3:33-35

• Day 22 — Thursday, 1/22 — Genesis 48-50, Proverbs 4:1-9

• Day 23 — Friday, 1/23 — Job 1-4, Proverbs 4:10-19

• Day 24 — Saturday, 1/24 — Job 5-8, Proverbs 4:20-27

• Day 25 — Sunday, 1/25 — Job 9-12, Psalm 16

For the sake of making this Bible study sustainable, my notes will be getting shorter with each week until I reach a more sustainable length — just like the lifespans of the patriarchs in the post-flood generations.

Day 19 — Monday, 1/19 — Genesis 36-39, Proverbs 3:25-27

• The name Baal-hanan in Genesis 36:38 means “Baal has been gracious,” indicating descendants of Esau/Edom had fallen into worshipping pagan gods

• Joseph. Why are you telling your brothers these pretentious dreams?! Just take your technicolor dreamcoat and run! (I’ve actually never seen Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat, I think I’m going to watch it this week.)

• Joseph’s immaturity about being favored provokes jealousy, Judah comes up with the idea to sell him into slavery, and Joseph ends up getting sold 5 times on the way to Egypt — ultimately getting the ball rolling on God’s plan

• Speaking of fulfilling God’s plans in surprising ways, Tamar ensures the existence of her progeny (King David, Mary, Joseph, and ultimately Jesus) in a SUPER surprising way. Despite his obvious faults, God ultimately redeems Judah following his repentance.

• Joseph just can’t catch a break. Contrasting Judah, he rejects the advances of Potiphar’s wife — and suffers for it anyway. But God is with him.

Day 20 — Tuesday, 1/20 — Genesis 40-43, Proverbs 3:28-32

• Joseph interprets dreams from prison while attributing the analysis to God, illustrating how God refines us before calling us into important positions of authority

• Joseph’s brothers arrive in Egypt. Oh, how the tables have turned.

Day 21 — Wednesday, 1/21 — Genesis 44-47, Proverbs 3:33-35

• Joseph tests his brothers’ moral character before revealing himself — and proving just how correct his teenage dreams were.

• Joseph talks about his divination cup, while he has attributed all his foresight to God.

• Judah continues to redeem himself by offering to stay in place of Benjamin.

• We learn that while bad things can still happen to us — God’s ultimate sovereignty rules in our favor. (An important note to remember as we embark on the Book of Job.)

Day 22 — Thursday, 1/22 — Genesis 48-50, Proverbs 4:1-9

• God’s blessing continues to favor the righteous younger rather than the expected first born.

• It’s interesting how important it is for Jacob to have his bones taken back to the land of his ancestors. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

• Jacob issues a prophetic blessing to each of his children that can be seen playing out for generations to come — even today.

Day 23 — Friday, 1/23 — Job 1-4, Proverbs 4:10-19

• Job is packed with theological wisdom:

  • First, we again have the bene Elohim — Hebrew for sons of God. This term consistently denotes heavenly beings, not humans — and is the same phrase used in Genesis 6.

  • We also learn about the existence of the Heavenly Court, where haśśāṭān (“the accuser” or Satan) presents himself to the divine council. So, Satan is a lawyer.

• We see clearly the interplay of heaven and earth. We learn that Satan is legalistic, while God is not. Job is introduced as genuinely righteous, not merely prosperous, establishing that what follows is not retributive justice. Satan thinks Job’s piety exists only because of the rewards he has received in this lifetime. Satan is only allowed to test Job within the limits set by God. And while Job curses the day he was born — he never curses God.

• I think Eliphaz sees a demon in Job 4. One of the bene Elohim roaming the earth with Satan.

Day 24 — Saturday, 1/24 — Job 5-8, Proverbs 4:20-27

• Job’s friends insist that Job’s suffering must be a corrective action from God. The logic is coherent but theologically hollow, as Job has never shown himself to be anything but submissive and dedicated in faith. Job insists that his agony is not due to any wrongdoing on his part and accuses his friends of betrayal masked as wisdom. Job’s friends exhibit a theologically rigid moral symmetry, reducing God to a predictable system and pushing the retributive principle to a cruel logical extreme.

• Job insists he has never done anything wrong, and begins to address God directly, describing divine scrutiny as excessive and oppressive.

Day 25 — Sunday, 1/25 — Job 9-12, Psalm 16

• Job laments that he cannot take God to court. He asserts that God’s power makes genuine justice inaccessible to humans and he wants a mediator to bridge the gap between human frailty and divine transcendence — isn’t this partly the job of the angels? Don’t they look down and hear our cries and bring our pleas to God? It’s curious here that Satan and the fallen angels are tormenting Job but we don’t see interference from the other angels; perhaps because God has made a decision to put boundaries on Job’s torment.

• Job’s friends continue urging repentance as the only rational response. Job decisively rejects his friends interpretations, noting that God’s governance includes destabilization as well as order.

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We will continue Job’s story next week — and hear from God Himself.

What came up for you this week? Let me know in the chat and in the comments below!

LOL.

This Week

We are reading:

• Genesis 12-35

• Proverbs 2:16-22, Proverbs 3:1-24

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Summary

We’re now in the Patriarch time period identified on the Ascension Press timeline (created by Jeff Cavins). This is when most churches pinpoint an actual historical time period, and agree that Abraham was born around 2000 BC.

The Bible actually pinpoints Abraham’s birth as 1948 years after the creation of the world. And the creation date of the world was famously calculated by Archbishop James Ussher (1581-1656), an Irish clergyman and scholar, who determined a creation date of Sunday, October 23rd, 4004 BC based on Biblical genealogies and historical texts. This would mean Abraham was likely born in 2056 BC.

Below are pictures of the Biblical charts that I have for this time frame to help you orient historically — the first set is from Adam’s Chronological Chart of History, and the last is from the Bible Timeline Chart from the Great Adventure Bible.

You can read this however you want, but here is the daily breakdown from our annual plan:

• Day 12 — Monday, 1/12 — Genesis 12-15, Proverbs 2:16-19

• Day 13 — Tuesday, 1/13 — Genesis 16-19, Proverbs 2:20-22

• Day 14 — Wednesday, 1/14 — Genesis 20-22, Proverbs 3:1-4

• Day 15 — Thursday, 1/15 — Genesis 23-25, Proverbs 3:5-8

• Day 16 — Friday, 1/16 — Genesis 26-28, Proverbs 3:9-12

• Day 17 — Saturday, 1/17 — Genesis 29-31, Proverbs 3:13-18

• Day 18 — Sunday, 1/18 — Genesis 32-35, Proverbs 3:19-24

For the sake of making this weekly free Bible study sustainable, my daily notes are shorter this week.

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Day 12 — Monday, 1/12 — Genesis 12-15, Proverbs 2:16-19

• God’s plan to save humanity continues with His covenant with Abraham.

• In Genesis 14:18, we have foreshadowing of Jesus with Melchizedek’s offer of bread and wine.

• Genesis 15 is a major piece of the ultimate redemption story for humanity. Performing the ancient covenant ritual, God places zero conditions on Abraham and He alone assumes responsibility for its fulfillment — ultimately setting Himself up to die by His own oath to Abraham.

  • Most remarkably — Genesis 15:1 states “…the word of the LORD came to Abram…” That’s a potential reference to Jesus, as Jesus is the Word of God.

These diagrams of covenants from the Great Adventure Bible are a great way to understand how God’s promises unfold over time, culminating in ultimate salvation.

And here are some maps relevant to this week’s readings on Abraham that should help orient you in this time frame if you don’t have a study bible with maps.

Day 13 — Tuesday, 1/13 — Genesis 16-19, Proverbs 2:20-22

• Mistake! Abraham and Sarah are impatient about God’s promise to give Abraham descendants and take matters into their own hands when Sarah offers up her servant, Hagar, for Abraham to impregnate, producing Ishmael (whose ancestors later become the Arabs, and Muhammad, who founds Islam).

• I’ve always found it interesting that circumcision is commanded on the 8th day of life — which is when babies have a surge of vitamin K, which is critical for blood clotting. How could humans have known this at that time? This had to be wisdom bestowed by God.

• Today we have my husband’s favorite Bible verse:

  Sarah was afraid, so she denied it, saying, “I didn’t laugh.” But the Lord said, “No, you did laugh.” Genesis 18:15 NLT

  Why did God think this was such an important footnote that he repeated it to Moses hundreds of years later? Write this down — Sarah laughed. She said she didn’t laugh but she definitely did.

  
  God’s got jokes.
  
  Abraham also laughs at God when He says He will make Abraham a father. And then God commands Abraham and Sarah name their child Isaac — which is Hebrew for “he laughs.”
  
  Jokes on jokes.

• I might have to do a whole separate article on the archaeological evidence for Sodom & Gomorrah.

• And is the pillar of salt pictured below Lot’s wife? This rock formation is venerated as Lot’s wife and is found near the cave where Lot and his family took shelter, near what is the now site of the Monastery of Saint Lot.

Day 14 — Wednesday, 1/14 — Genesis 20-22, Proverbs 3:1-4

• He laughs is born. But what happens next is not comedic. And I don’t think Isaac was laughing at the top of that mountain. Ultimately, this is yet another OT foreshadowing of Jesus — God’s sacrifice of His only begotten son.

• The story of Abraham being commanded to sacrifice Isaac is often perceived as confusing, or barbaric, or an example of an unjust God. But by fully understanding the meaning of this passage we can see that this is not the case.

  • First, God saving Isaac stands in stark contrast to (and as prohibition from) the popular practice of child sacrifice at the time.

  • Second, by this point, Abraham knew that God had a plan. He had already given him a son from a post-menopausal 90 year old woman. He had promised more descendants than stars in the sky. He knew God would either stop the sacrifice, or bring Isaac back to life, or had some other plan to fulfill the promises He was clearly intent on fulfilling. Abraham’s demonstration of faith and obedience is admirable.

Day 15 — Thursday, 1/15 — Genesis 23-25, Proverbs 3:5-8

• Abraham goes to great lengths to ensure Isaac’s wife is not a Canaanite.

• Does God have a preference for the second born sons? Abel over Cain, Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau (this note may or may not have been contributed by Alex, the second born).

• Esau sells his birthright to Jacob for lentil stew.

Day 16 — Friday, 1/16 — Genesis 26-28, Proverbs 3:9-12

• Isaac is definitely his father’s son claiming Rebekah is his sister. Abimelach constantly saying “She is obviously not your sister!” is so funny to me.

• Jacob steals Esau’s blessing with their mom’s help, and while the circumstances are almost comedic (fixing goat skin on him?!) — I am curious about the moral semi-ambiguity here given that God told Rebekah prior to their birth that Jacob would be the chosen son and that Esau would serve him.

• Jacob’s ladder resembles the ziggurat temples of Mesopotamia like the Tower of Babel — and becomes a major icon of Freemasonry.

Day 17 — Saturday, 1/17 — Genesis 29-31, Proverbs 3:13-18

• In yet another example of Biblical karma, Jacob gets tricked into marrying Leah over Rachel — but then he gets Rachel, the second born, as his second wife.

  • Bible reading pro-tip — a fun activity while reading the Bible is looking up the meanings of everyone’s names. In Genesis 30 this is especially interesting.

• We have an interesting event here of Rachel stealing her father’s household idols, as she escapes with Jacob back to the land of Canaan (which is also a foreshadowing of Exodus) — showing that paganism, viewed through the lens of worshipping the false gods derived from the fallen angels, has by this point proliferated through the ancient world. Rachel appears to believe in the favor of The Most High God, but is taking these idols just in case. Which, unfortunately, will not work out well in the end.

Day 18 — Sunday, 1/18 — Genesis 32-35, Proverbs 3:19-24

• After wrestling with a man/God for an entire night to the point that he dislocates his hip, Jacob gets renamed Israel, which means to wrestle with God.

• We have yet another instance of sexual assault in just the first book of the Bible — and an absolutely insane revenge story. Listen. Should Simeon and Levi have convinced the prince who raped their sister to circumcise himself and every man in the city, with the secret intention of ambushing and slaughtering the whole city 3 days later as they were recovering? Probably not. It put the whole family in jeopardy. But we once again learn that God’s chosen people are not perfect, and these were very different times. Will this come up again later for the descendants of Simeon and Levi? Most definitely.

• We end this week with the death of Isaac — and the emerging existence of Israel.

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New Chat Format

We are two weeks in to this Bible study and the chat remains overwhelming. I thought it might calm down after the first week but so far it has not.

In the interest of hopefully making it easier for everyone to discuss — I am going to open a second weekly chat for paying subscribers only. I will prioritize responding to questions, comments, and discussions in the paid chat.

I will also open another free chat this week and will still participate as much as I can in the free chat, but I know I am missing questions, comments, and discussions, and this is my attempt to prioritize how best to support and engage sustainably through the year.

Thank you all for your understanding and for being flexible as I figure out how best to approach this Bible Study.

As always, please feel free to share your thoughts on the week’s readings in the comments below!

Structure of the Good Book Club

I’ve been getting a lot of questions on the structure of The Good Book Club. For the most part, I will be sharing my thoughts on the upcoming week’s readings through these weekly posts. It’s up to you whether you choose to read these posts after doing the readings or before (might be helpful if you’re brand new to the Bible or think it might be boring). My commentary is not intended to be a full summary/overview or a replacement of the readings — my goal is simply to break down some of the meaning and the most interesting or confusing parts.

You can share your thoughts on the week’s readings in the comments on these posts, and we can discuss in the monthly chat. I am also figuring out an end-of-month zoom or live where I will discuss the main thoughts/ideas/theories/lessons from each month.

Other Bible in a Year Plans

This study goes through the Bible chronologically (plus Enoch and Jubilees), so if you are looking for an audio/podcast with daily insight from theologians, you can use the Capitalism & Glitter Good Book Club as a discussion group while going through something more established that also approaches a chronological reading plan — like the Ascension Press/Father Mike Schmitz Bible in a Year, the Bible Recap, or others. We aren’t exactly on the same timeline as any other plan, but would be close enough that we’re at least in the same books at similar times.

This Week

We are reading:

• Enoch 12-36, 83-84, 106-107

• Genesis 7-11

• Psalm 82, Proverbs 1:1-33, Proverbs 2:1-15 (the italicized Psalm connects to the week’s reading)

If you don’t have a hard copy of the Book of Enoch, you can find it online here.

Summary

So this week — Enoch delivers the final judgment to the fallen angels, the angels ask Enoch to intervene for them and God is like !!???!?, Enoch is taken to the ends of the earth where he sees the structure of the universe, the afterlife, and the places of judgment — so, heaven and hell.

We also get into the interpretation and theory that the planets are the fallen angels, chained up as seven great burning mountains and imprisoned for eternity.

This is the conclusion of the Early World time period (for now) and includes the judgement of the watchers, Noah and the flood, and the Tower of Babel.

Another jam packed week.

You can read this however you want, but here is the daily breakdown from the plan for reference:

• Day 5 — Monday, 1/5 — Enoch 12-16, Psalm 82

• Day 6 — Tuesday, 1/6 — Enoch 17-19, Proverbs 1:1-7

• Day 7 — Wednesday, 1/7 — Enoch 20-23, Proverbs 1:8-19

• Day 8 — Thursday, 1/8 — Enoch 24-27, Proverbs 1:20-33

• Day 9 — Friday, 1/9 — Enoch 28-36, Proverbs 2:1-5

• Day 10 — Saturday, 1/10 — Enoch 83-84 and 106-107, Proverbs 2:6-8

• Day 11 — Sunday, 1/11 — Genesis 7-11, Proverbs 2:9-15

This week will conclude our initial read of the first section of the Book of Enoch. I think it’s critical for understanding the Old Testament, but I don’t want us to get too sidetracked with an esoteric book that has borderline Revelation vibes, so I’m breaking up sections of Enoch to read throughout the year when they are most relevant.

This first section of Enoch, the Book of the Watchers, is the most critical for a more supernatural understanding of the entire Biblical worldview but especially Genesis and everything that comes from it, including some of the parts of Scripture that may seem less interesting with a more metaphorical take. For example, God’s seeming obsession with “clean” and “unclean” in Leviticus makes a lot more sense when understood in the context of corrupted flesh and bloodlines.

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Below are my notes/thoughts/commentary for each day, with the summary from Nickelsburg & VanderKam’s intro to the Book of Enoch on the sections in this week’s readings.

Day 5 — Monday, 1/5 — Enoch 12-16, Psalm 82

From Nickelsburg & VanderKam:

Chapters 12—16 interpret chapters 6-11, employing the form of a prophetic commissioning account. Enoch ascends to heaven, where God commands him to announce judgment on the fallen watchers. Here the watchers’ sin is described as the forbidden intermixture of flesh and spirit. Different from chapters 6—11, the death of the watchers does not annihilate them, but releases their spirits to constitute a realm of evil spirits who plague humanity until the final judgment.

• Enoch is “taken” at a relatively young age (365 years old, which is young compared to the 1000 year lifespans of early Genesis) and goes to Heaven and sees God’s throne room.

  • Side note: the Bible seems to show dreams can be messages from God OR instruments of deceit from false gods/demons, so the description in 1 Enoch 14:8 that sounds a lot like astral projection as Enoch goes to visit Heaven is interesting in that context.

• The Watchers ask Enoch to intercede for them and God is like, excuse me, wtf??! Angels are supposed to intercede for humans and not the other way around. He uses Enoch as a messenger to the watchers (a role that will be copied in Greek mythology as Hermes) — having him tell them that, no, they will not be forgiven and instead they will be forced to watch their children fight to the death. They were not supposed to beget children and the spirits of their unholy offspring will forever remain on earth as evil spirits (demons) and will never come to heaven because they were never supposed to mix with flesh or exist in that way in the first place.

• Psalm 82 opens with God presiding over heaven’s court, pronouncing judgment on the heavenly beings — I say, ‘You are gods’ you are all children of the Most High. But you will die like mere mortals and fall like every other ruler.’ Psalm 82:6-7

Day 6 — Tuesday, 1/6 — Enoch 17-19, Proverbs 1:1-7

Chapters 17—32 enhance the account of Enoch’s commissioning by providing a spatial reference to the previous temporal prediction of a future judgment. Enoch sees the places where the apparatus of judgment has been prepared and where it will be executed. Chapters 17—19 recount Enoch’s journey to the far northwest, where in the company of interpreting angels, he views the places of final punishment for the watchers and certain rebellious stars.

• The (not fallen) Angels then guide Enoch through terrifying cosmic regions. He is taken to places of fire and chaos and is told this is a prison for the stars/angels who disobeyed. Enoch learns, and we are told, that some stars are actually angelic beings punished for rebellion — and this is where, with a particular read, we have a possible origin story for the planets as fallen angels (which would make sense because the planets then become the false gods in Roman, Greek, and Babylonian mythology).

  • Beyond this chasm I saw a place where there was neither firmament of heaven above, nor firmly founded earth beneath it. Neither was there water on it, nor bird; but the place was desolate and fearful. There I saw seven stars like great burning mountains. To me, when I inquired about them, the angel said, “This place is the end of heaven and earth; this has become a prison for the stars and the hosts of heaven. The stars that are rolling over in the fire, these are they that transgressed the command of the Lord in the beginning of their rising, for they did not come out in their appointed times. And he was angry with them and bound them until the time of the consummation of their sins — ten thousand years. 1 Enoch 18:12-16

    • This mirrors the New Testament where Jude writes about those “wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever” (Jude 1:13). Wandering stars in the Bible are known to be the planets.

Day 7 — Wednesday, 1/7 — Enoch 20-23, Proverbs 1:8-19

Chapters 20—32 describe a second journey, which begins where the first one left off and carries Enoch across the face of the earth to its eastern reaches. Here, in addition to the places described in the previous journey, Enoch recounts his visions of the places of eschatological significance for humanity—both the righteous chosen and the sinners (the place of the dead, the mountain of God, and Jerusalem), as well as primordial Eden. As in the previous journey, the literary form of the segments of this journey includes these elements: Enoch’s progress to a new place; his vision; his question; an interpretation by the accompanying angel.

• 20-21 is essentially a rehash of 17-19, and then 22 is a detailed description of Sheol with separate areas for the righteous, for the sinners, and for those awaiting judgement. Below is a diagram of this Enochian cosmological view, created by Dr. Michael Heiser, and consistent with the Hebrew understanding of the world at this point in time (2500+ years ago).

Day 8 — Thursday, 1/8 — Enoch 24-27, Proverbs 1:20-33

• Enoch sees the throne of God on a central high mountain, surrounded by six other glorious mountains with beautiful precious stones and fragrant trees — including the Tree of Life, whose fragrance is enchanting and will seep into our bones after that day of judgement when we all live in glory with God in heaven (!).

• Contrasting the heavenly and Sheol visions, Enoch describes seeing Jerusalem as a holy city surrounded by a cursed valley (often associated with Gahenna, a place Jesus will later reference as the location of fiery judgment — which may also be the Valley of the Shadow of Death).

Day 9 — Friday, 1/9 — Enoch 28-36, Proverbs 2:1-5

The account of Enoch’s journey to the places of the luminaries (chaps. 33— 36) briefly summarizes material in chapters 72—82. The Book of the Watchers probably took its present form by the mid- or late third century b.c.e.

• Enoch travels to the ends of the earth. He sees storehouses of wind, places where natural forces are controlled by angels, and all manner of divine scents including: frankincense and myrrh, cinnamon, storax (vanilla-like) and galbanum (earthy and green), aloe, almond, cardamom and pepper.

  • Side note: I am currently in the process of collaborating with a candle-maker to produce Enoch/Bible inspired candles. Stay tuned.

• Chapters 33-36 are a summary and preview of The Book of Luminaries discussed in greater detail in 1 Enoch 72-82 — which we will read in early February. Basically, Enoch travels to the ends of the earth charting all the stars, the gates from which they emerge, and how they come forth and their positions and times and months; he sees the origin of all wind and the gates they blow through; as well as the origin of rain and dew and the gate it emerges from.

Day 10 — Saturday, 1/10 — Enoch 83-84 and 106-107, Proverbs 2:6-8

The Dream Vision (Chaps. 83—84)

Enoch recounts two dream visions about future events. In the first he foresees the world’s destruction in the Flood (chaps. 83—84). In its literary line and its typology of Flood and final judgment, the narrative in chapter 83 parallels stories about Noah in chapters 65 and 106-107, and the prayer in chapter 84 is probably dependent on the angelic prayer in chapter 9.

The Birth of Noah (Chaps. 106—107)

According to this narrative, Noah’s miraculous birth foreshadowed his role as the preserver of the human race. Placed at the end of the corpus, the story promises salvation for the righteous, who will survive the great judgment that was prefigured in the Flood. As a literary type, the story parallels accounts of special births in the Hebrew Bible (e.g., Isaac, Samson, and Samuel) as well as the stories of the conceptions of Jesus and John the Baptist in Matthew 1 and Luke 1. Its structure also parallels 1 Enoch 65 and 83.

• In 83-84, Enoch has a devastating vision/premonition of the Flood and years later he tells his son, Methuselah, about it.

• In 106-107, we learn about Noah’s miraculous and alarming birth. Noah is the grandson of Methuselah — and when he is born, he is described as whiter than snow and redder than a rose, his hair is white and curly like wool, and his face is so glorious that when he opens his eyes the house shines like the sun. He is described as standing up from the hands of the midwife and immediately praising the Lord (!). Lamech is terrified of this infant. He is most concerned that Noah may be born of angels. This isn’t an exciting prospect, he is tremendously upset by it. So much so that he asks Methuselah to track down Enoch (who has been taken) to find out what’s going on. Enoch explains that Noah is in fact Lamech’s fully human child, who has been born righteous and blameless, and will become the only remaining person on earth, along with his three sons and their wives, after a year-long devastating flood to wash away the transgressions of the fallen angels and humankind.

Whew! Ok, back to Genesis. We’ll come back to Enoch for a few days in early February to learn more about the luminaries.

Day 11 — Sunday, 1/11 — Genesis 7-11, Proverbs 2:9-15

• Noah’s ark and the flood should probably have a whole entry on its own, but it’s crammed in here on the same day as the Tower of Babel so we can wrap up the early world period of time then move on to Abraham next week. A few key points here:

  • The flood washing away the sins of humanity and allowing us to start over is a beautiful foreshadowing of baptism, amidst the abject horrors of the reasons for it being required.

  • While many modern theologians and church doctrines trying to bridge a religious and scientific worldview hold that this was likely a localized flood — there is evidence the world over and in nearly every culture’s origin story a massive, worldwide flood

  • There is potentially evidence of the ark on or near Mount Ararat

  • Among other geological features the world over, the Grand Canyon shows evidence of a massive flood — so I’m heading up there to do a little research and will report back with a full post on this in the next few weeks.

  • The new covenant being a rainbow is curious to think about in light of its modern symbolic use, though I don’t know if I’m ready to dive into that on Substack

• Genesis 9 is an absolutely insane chapter that doesn’t get enough attention. First of all, in Genesis 9:20-21, Noah gets off the ark, plants a vineyard, and gets drunk. Why does he get drunk? He’s “righteous and blameless.” Has the opening of the floodgates and the deluge changed the atmosphere? Is that how God shortened the lifespan of humans from nearly 1000 years to 120? And is the atmospheric change why Noah doesn’t handle alcohol the way he did prior to the flood?

  • And then in Genesis 9:22, we have just a truly astonishing story. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. Many Christian scholars hold that “saw the nakedness of his father” is an idiom meaning he slept with Noah’s wife. He slept with his own mother. As an act of dominance. So for the second week in a row we have an implication of force and violence against women. And the sentence includes “father of Canaan” which implies that Canaan is the offspring of this illicit and forceful incestuous act, which would be why in 9:24-27, Canaan is cursed.

• And finally, we have the Tower of Babel. I could write whole articles on Genesis 10-11, and in fact much of my previous work does reference these chapters, especially Secret Societies Part 4 and A Brief History of Space and Time — discussing things like the similarities between Nimrod’s story and the Epic of Gilgamesh, Erech being Uruk being modern day Iraq, the Bushes nicknaming themselves Gog and Magog when they were in the not-so-secret society Skull & Bones at Yale.

  • The Stranger Theology Bible in a Year Study is establishing a “Cosmic Mountain” theme. As we can see from the Book of Enoch, God sits atop a mountain that bridges heaven and earth. As Dr. Joel Muddamalle says, “What do you do when there are no mountains?” (because presumably, they’ve been washed away in a massive flood) “You build one." The Tower of Babel wasn’t just an affront to God because it was the people speaking in one tongue and working together. It was an affront to God because it was, yet again, an attempt to usurp Him by creating a mountain for a lesser deity to sit upon.

  • Genesis 6:4 says “The Nephilim [giants] were on the earth in those days — and also afterward…” One of the theories is that the wives of Noah’s sons, Ham, Shem, and Japheth, carried the corrupted and/or sinful bloodlines prior to the flood that allowed the giants to return (though maybe not as big as they were before).

Further Reading

If you are interested in learning more about what is discussed in Book of Enoch and the “blurry” parts of Scripture, one of the best theologians on this topic is the late Dr. Michael Heiser.

His book The Unseen Realm has brought back to modern day Christians and Biblical scholars the historic supernatural worldview that was held by the original readers and writers of the Bible. This book is complexly documented and geared towards presenting a scholarly defense to pastors and Biblical students. Dr. Heiser has another version of this book called Supernatural that covers the same material but is written more for a lay audience.

As an Old Testament scholar, Dr. Heiser has written nearly a dozen books, had his own podcast called The Naked Bible, and appeared on many other podcasts (including Blurry Creatures episodes 34 and 134). I currently have his books Angels and Demons checked out of the library, and am reading them in between rearing three children and running this year-long Bible study I inexplicably launched last minute.

Same time next week — and please share your thoughts in the comments and the chat! I’m making a new chat each week going forward since there was so much discussion last week.

Happy New Year — let’s get started!

I’m typically going to be sending these notes out on Sunday for the week’s readings which start on Monday. I’m sending this early since it’s a half-week. And I’m also opening up the chat for January!

This week we are reading:

• Genesis 1-6

• Enoch 1-11

• Psalms 19, 104, 136, and 1 (the italicized Psalms connect to the week’s reading)

If you need the annual plan we are following, it can be found here.

If you don’t have a hard copy of the Book of Enoch, you can find it online here.

This is the Early World time period and includes the creation of everything, the fall of mankind, the watchers, life before the flood, and why things took such a dark turn so early in the history of man. It’s just a 4 day week, but we have a lot to cover!

You can read this however you want, but here is the daily breakdown from the plan for reference:

• Day 1 — Thursday, 1/1 — Genesis 1-3, Psalm 19

• Day 2 — Friday, 1/2 — Genesis 4-6, Psalm 104

• Day 3 — Saturday, 1/3 — Enoch 1-5, Psalm 136

• Day 4 — Sunday, 1/4 — Enoch 6-11, Psalm 1

I could spend weeks talking about the beginning of Genesis alone, and this post is probably (hopefully) much longer than my weekly posts will usually be — but I’ll just start by bulleting some of my thoughts as I go through each day’s reading, and we can discuss in the comments and in the chat:

Genesis 1-3

• First of all, many mainstream Christian traditions treat the early part of Genesis as mythological and not as scientific truth. But, what if it is scientific truth, and our modern understanding of science as established through the Enlightenment just a couple hundred years ago is incomplete — and incorrect?

• God says “let there be light” on day 1 (Gen 1:3) but doesn’t make the sun until day 4 (Gen 1:16). What’s that about?

• It apparently didn’t rain before the flood. But mist would come up for the earth and water all the ground. — Genesis 2:5-6

• I love going down the rabbit hole of where the Garden of Eden actually was based on the clues in Genesis 2. There is a theory (which the entire Blurry Creature Bible Study is based on) that Eden was a cosmic mountain, which would make sense as the 4 rivers flow out of it — down the mountain. It also makes sense that because God dwelt on a mountain when He was on earth, so did/do the fallen angels/demonic spirits dwell in mountains trying to usurp His throne. This is why a lot of mythology and folklore have mountains associated with their gods — like Mount Olympus for the Greek pantheon of Olympians. Ezekiel 28:13-14 discusses Satan as a guardian cherub dwelling ‘on the holy mountain of God.’

• So Genesis 3 opens with a talking snake, which is presented as totally normal, Eve doesn’t even bat an eye, and this is treated as some sort of metaphor by most mainstream churches. What if it’s not a metaphor? What if the animals used to talk, but the animal kingdom fell along with humankind and the angels, and God scrambled their language foreshadowing what He’s about to do in Genesis 11? (Spoiler alert.)

• Speaking of foreshadowing — Mary and Jesus are foretold in Genesis 3:15. And I will cause hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel. In the same way that a human woman holds responsibility for the fall of mankind, so shall a human woman hold the future redemption. (And I love the hot take that the fall was equally if not fully Adam’s fault because he wasn’t watching out for Eve, and followed along despite God’s commands.)

• Another interesting point tying Genesis 3:14 back to Genesis 2:7 — God formed Adam from dust from the ground, then after the serpent deceived Adam and Eve, the serpent is cursed to crawl on his belly and eat dust.

• And then God expels humans from the Garden of Eden and places the cherubim with a swinging flaming sword to guard the way to the tree of life. Casual. Normal. Probably just a metaphor, don’t worry about it.

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Gensis 4-6

• Cain is cast out to the land of Nod east of Eden and is afraid someone might get him as revenge for slaying Abel. Who is he afraid of? What other people exist? (…does he mean his family?)

• Cain builds the first city in Genesis 4:17. Many scholars believe this is the ancient Sumerian city of Eridu. The way the text is translated it reads like he names the city after his son, Enoch (not the same Enoch as the book of Enoch). However, there is a compelling theory that actually the way it’s written in Hebrew should be translated as, “And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bore Enoch; and he [Enoch, rather than Cain] builded a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his (Enoch’s) son. And unto Enoch was born Irad …” Irad sounds a lot like Eridu. And, curiously, the patron god of Eridu is Enki — which sure sounds a lot like Enoch. Here’s an interesting article about Eridu for further reading.

• A tale of two Enochs — as seen below, this first Enoch is Cain’s son, while the book of Enoch we are reading is from what seems to be a redemptive Enoch down Seth’s line.

• Genesis 4:19-22 — Lamech becomes the world’s first Mormon with two wives, and his son Tubal-Cain becomes the world’s first Freemason (according to their legends)

• Jesus is foretold in Genesis 5, in the names of the first 10 generations of men on Earth: by stringing together the symbolic meanings of the names — Adam (Man), Seth (Appointed), Enosh (Mortal), Kenan (Sorrow), Mahalalel (Blessed God), Jared (Shall come down), Enoch (Teaching), Methuselah (His death shall bring), Lamech (Despairing), and Noah (Rest/Comfort) — we get Man (is) appointed mortal sorrow; but the Blessed God shall come down teaching that His death shall bring the despairing rest (comfort).

• Enoch lived for 365 years and one day he just up and disappeared with God. Didn’t die. Just left. Enoch lived 365 years, walking in close fellowship with God. Then one day he disappeared, because God took him. — Genesis 5:21

• Genesis 6 is a whole can of worms that necessitates the reading of the Book of Enoch for more context. First, Genesis 6:2-4 states that the sons of God saw the daughters of men and they “took” them and bore children with them, who became “men of renown.” The original Hebrew for this section strongly implies that the sons of God are angels (this phrase, bene Elohim, refers to angels elsewhere in Scripture), and that the taking of human women was forceful. Some speculate that this is the origin of human trafficking. In this context, the wickedness of humankind that God feels compelled to wipe out entirely with a flood makes a lot more sense than the mainstream interpretation that this was simply the lineage of Seth bearing children to the lineage of Cain.

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The Book of Enoch

The Book of Enoch presents a whole new spin on the origin of mankind.

If you don’t have a hard copy of Enoch, you can find it online here.

Enoch 1-5

Here is the summary of Chapters 1-5 from Nickelsburg & VanderKam’s intro to the Book of Enoch:

The Book of the Watchers (Chaps. 1—36)

Chapters 1—5 were composed as an introduction to chapters 1—36, but now set the keynote for the entire work. They constitute a tri-partite prophetic oracle, in which “Enoch” announces the coming theophany, when God and the heavenly entourage will render judgment against the rebel angels who introduced evil into the world and against sinful humans, who perpetrate it. The first section (1:1-9) paraphrases part of Moses’ final blessing on Israel (Deuteronomy 33) and an oracle of Balaam (Numbers 24) and bases Enoch’s authority on visions received in heaven and interpreted by angels. The second section (2:1—5:4), cast in the language of Israelite wisdom traditions, expands the indictment of “all flesh” (1:9) by contrasting the obedience of the heavenly bodies and the earthly seasons with humanity’s disobedience. The final section (5:5-9) employs language from Isaiah 56— 66 to describe the blessings and curses that await the righteous chosen and the sinners.

• Enoch 1:6 — the high mountains will… fall and break apart — sounds to me like the flood demolished the high holy mountain of Eden, and could also be responsible for the breakup of Pangea.

• Early Christian church father Tertullian (155-220 A.D.) wrote that Jews ended up rejecting Enoch because it prophesied Jesus Christ as the Messiah:

  • Look, he comes with the myriads of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all, and to destroy all the wicked, and to convict all humanity for all the wicked deeds that they have done, and the proud and hard words that wicked sinners spoke against him. — Enoch 1:9

• Enoch 2 discusses the luminaries (stars), that they rise and set at their appointed times and do not transgress their appointed order — thus beginning the analogy (or scientific truth) of referring to angels as “stars”

Enoch 6-11

Here is the summary of Chapters 6-11 from Nickelsburg & VanderKam’s intro to the Book of Enoch:

Chapters 6—11 are an interpretation of Genesis 6—9 that identifies events of the primordial past with those of the author’s time. “The sons of God” (Gen 6:2), identified as angels (“watchers”), led by their chieftain Shemihazah, rebel against God by mating with mortal women and begetting giants, who devastate the earth. The giants can be interpreted as stand-ins for the warriors of the author’s own time (the Hellenistic kings). [Adrian’s note — or they can be interpreted as the mythological demigods in Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, etc cultures preceding from this event.] The Genesis description of the Flood flows into a scenario that is appropriate for God’s eschatological judgment and the inception of the new age. Interwoven with the myth of the watchers and the women is a second pair of myths, which identify the sin of the watchers as the revelation of forbidden secrets (metallurgy and mining, magic and the mantic arts) that promote violence and promiscuity. Here the rebel chieftain is Asael, a figure who resembles Prometheus, the rebellious divine figure of Greek myth. Humanity’s plea, heard by the four high angels, triggers the judgment. With the sinful principals annihilated, a new age ensues with blessings for the chosen and those of humanity who have converted to the worship of God.

• Enoch 6 discusses how the angels wanted to beget children for themselves. They appear to have been jealous of humans and their ability to procreate, and they wanted to make children in their image. And they swear an oath to bind themselves together in transgression with a curse. They descend onto Mount Hermon in the days of Jared (the 6th generation)— so during Enoch’s dad’s time.

• In Enoch, we further clarify that fallen angels are the beings who introduce much evil to a somewhat naive mankind, corrupting every living creature. The unholy offspring, the giants, begin to kill and devour all men, and sin against animals.

• Amongst the sins taught to mankind are sorcery and charms, cutting roots and plants (which I don’t think means all herbology, but I do think means some herbology — and the Greek word here is pharmakeia, from which we get the modern word phayrmacuetial), weaponry and metallurgy, jewelry and makeup, astrology and the signs of the sun, moon, stars, lightening flashes, and more — Enoch 8-9

  • Shemihazah taught spells and the cutting of roots. Hermani taught sorcery for the loosing of spells and magic and skill. Baraqel taught the signs of the lightning flashes.

    Kokabel taught the signs of the stars. Ziqel taught the signs of the shooting stars. Arteqoph taught the signs of the earth. Shamsiel taught the signs of the sun. Sahriel taught the signs of the moon. And they all began to reveal mysteries to their wives and to their children. — Enoch 8:3

• There is a lot of discussion of the earth crying out about the iniquity — sort of similar to Abel’s spilled blood crying out from the earth in Genesis

• Certainly humans participated and were directly responsible for the earlier fall by using free will to sin by turning away from God, but it’s clear here that the complete and total corruption of the Earth was not solely the idea and doing of humans — there are several other categories and classes of beings involved here — which is why God’s judgment allows for our redemption through the good human actions of Noah and later Mary. In contrast He makes the offspring of the fallen angels fight each other to the death (Enoch 10:9) and then await their final judgment. The angels were never supposed to have children — and now they have to watch their unholy offspring fight to their own mutually assured destruction. Brutal.

  • They have gone in to the daughters of the men of earth, and they have lain with them, and have defiled themselves with the women. And they have revealed to them all sins, and have taught them to make hate-inducing charms. And now look, the daughters of men have borne sons from them, giants, half-breeds. <And the blood of men is shed on the earth,> And the whole earth is filled with iniquity. — Enoch 9:8-9

• This additional context from Enoch allows us to better understand just how corrupted all flesh was. It seems as though human/angel hybrids weren’t the only half-breeds — which is probably why Egyptian and other ancient gods are half animals.

• Concluding thought on Enoch this week — the sins illicitly taught to mankind by these defecting angels is the origin of the “secret knowledge” passed down through mystery schools and secret societies.

And then in the Psalms this week we have the Leviathan (a sea monster) and Og of Bashar (a giant). Curiouser and curiouser.

That’s what came up for me. What comes up for you as you read these sections? What questions do you have? Leave your thoughts and reflections in the comments below! And please join me in discussion in the January Bible Study chat as well.

Excluded from Scripture, yet referenced multiple times by the New Testament writers.

Detailing aspects of Genesis that are woefully brief, expanding the ideas presented in Daniel and Isaiah about heavenly courts and ultimate judgement, and further detailing the divine council presented in Job and Psalms.

Lost to the Western world for over a thousand years and rediscovered in 1773, the Book of Enoch has sprung back into our consciousness during a modern revival, swirling through esoteric circles and taking on a life of its own.

Widely read and accepted by early Jewish and Christian scholars, the cultural loss of the Book of Enoch ultimately changed the mainstream Christian interpretation of several key passages in the Bible, which has resulted in most people having an incomplete understanding of angelology and demonology.

While this loss of understanding does not ultimately affect salvation, it does affect our understanding of angels, demons — and ultimate judgement.

The Relative Importance of Enoch and Jubilees

Enoch and Jubilees were considered historically important to the earliest Jewish and Christian theologians, but they ultimately were not considered scripture (except in the Ethiopian Orthodox canon) as there was debate about whether they were actually divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit. And more controversially, there was debate about what was contained within them. As these books were heavy into angelology — the nature of angels and their origins, their role in administering God’s law — they got cut as being less applicable for everyday reading in churches.

In the post-Jesus early Christian world, they became especially problematic as the early church fought Gnosticism and sought doctrinal clarity, making exclusion from the canon both practical and protective for the early church.

By the 5th century AD, both Enoch and Jubilees had stopped being copied, translated, and preserved, resulting in the loss of the original Hebrew and Greek texts as well as the understanding contained within for more than a thousand years. In 1773, amidst increasing European interest in the Ethiopian manuscripts of the Bible, a manuscript of the Book of Enoch was brought from Ethiopia to Europe for the first time, with Jubilees following several decades later. The texts were then translated from Ge’ez, the Ethiopic language, to English.

In 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered containing 15,000 fragments of scrolls of about 900 different texts dating back as far as 250 BC. The most numerous biblical scrolls found were Psalms (30), Deuteronomy (25), Isaiah (19), and Genesis (19) — with 11 copies of the Enoch and 15 copies of Jubilees found, confirming that these texts were widely read and understood in antiquity. Once translated from Aramaic and Hebrew, these texts provided additional context and insight to the Ethiopian versions of Enoch and Jubilees which had been preserved.

In contrast to the lost books rediscovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which also includes fragments of the Book of Giants, there are other books referenced in the Bible and clearly read and understood in ancient Judaism that have been truly lost and not rediscovered, including the Book of Jasher and the Book of the Wars of the Lord. Today there are multiple books purporting to be the Book of Jasher that are actually modern forgeries.

What is the Book of Enoch?

First, let’s clarify exactly which book we are talking about.

There are three books attributed to Enoch, the great-great-great-great-grandson of Adam, a prophet, and Noah’s great-grandfather.

The first Book of Enoch, known as 1 Enoch, is the most well known, and is the only book of Enoch included in our Bible study. While excluded from the canon of most Scripture, it is included in the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible.

1 Enoch is actually a compilation of 5 books:

• The Book of the Watchers

• The Book of Parables (or “Similitudes”)

• The Book of the Luminaries (or The Astronomical Book)

• The Book of Dreams

  • Enoch’s First Dream Vision: The Flood

  • Enoch’s Second Dream Vision: The History of Humanity (or The Animal Apocalypse)

• The Epistle of Enoch

These sections are presumed by most scholars to have been written at different times, with the latest being around 200 BC (the Second Temple period).

It is said that Enoch invented writing, and, while in modern day this work is classified as pseudigraphical (not written by the author to which it is attributed, like Job) — several early Church Fathers believed that Enoch did, in fact, write this text. That would mean it was given to Noah as either a written or oral tradition and survived the flood on the ark.

If this is true, it would mean that the Book of Enoch is the oldest Biblical text, predating all other written religious texts on earth. It would make the Book of Enoch the only antediluvian book of the Bible. It would also prove that Mesopotamian folklore of their gods — whom they claim invented writing, survived a flood, built great cities and towers/ziggurats, etc — is a direct copy and inversion of the origins of humanity documented in the Holy Bible, and not the other way around.

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And if it’s not true, it is at minimum a Christian and Jewish text of great historical importance.

2 Enoch and 3 Enoch were written later, dating to the 3rd and 5th century AD, respectively. As these books were written much later, they were not treated as important historically or considered potentially canonical to either Jewish or Christian theologians, and they are not included in our reading. They also contain material that is increasingly esoteric, potentially gnostic, and at odds with other areas of canonical Scripture.

Contents of the Book of Enoch

The Book of Enoch details that the fallen angels exercising their free will chose to defect from God’s design to crossbreed with human women, resulting in the giants and demigods (nephilim) detailed in the folklore of nearly every culture (“men of renown” Genesis 6:4). The Book of Enoch, together with the Book of Jubilees, details the origin of demons as the disembodied spirits of the nephilim.

That’s incredibly scandalous.

Just as Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, exercising their own free will — so, too, did some of the angels sin, utilizing their own free will to defect from God and the order of His kingdom. While they were given a role intended to teach humans good and virtuous skills, they defected and instead taught humans the destructive arts of sorcery, astrology, weaponry, and herbology (pharmakeia in Greek), to name just a few.

It’s also not an addition to scripture — it’s very clearly stated in Genesis 6 that the “sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them” (Genesis 6:4). Just a few sentences later Genesis states that “all flesh” had been corrupted (Genesis 6:11). However, there is not much more elaboration within Genesis itself, and many church traditions have chosen to sort of glaze over the weirder parts of this aspect of Scripture and interpret it metaphorically, claiming the “sons of God” refers to Seth’s lineage and “daughters of men” refer to Cain’s lineage. But that doesn’t explain giants.

It’s a safe and convenient — but likely inaccurate — interpretation. And it’s an interpretation that is at odds with the original understanding of the texts and the Bible.

The authors of the Bible, both Old Testament and New, were clearly very familiar with the Book of Enoch and appeared to have treated it as the inspired word of God. The author(s) of the Torah (first 5 books of the Bible, commonly believed to be written by Moses) directly quote from Enoch, using verbatim language — indicating that it may have been around in existence when the first books of the Bible were written (further bolstering the claim that it may be the oldest existing Biblical text). The Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) and the Book of Acts also draw on and reference the information and concepts contained in Enoch, while the Book of Jude references it directly.

What is the Book of Jubilees?

The Book of Jubilees, also called “little Genesis,” was also widely read by early Jewish and Christian theologians, and contains elaborations that answer some of the questions people have about the early world in the beginning of Genesis.

Who did Cain and Seth marry if Adam and Eve were the first and only two humans on Earth? (Their sisters.) What are the names of the women and wives who are not named in early Genesis? How and why were the nephilim spirits permitted to continue existing on Earth as demons to torment humanity?

The Book of Jubilees is written from the perspective of an angel dictating to Moses how and when the world was created according to a specific timeline designed by God, with a plethora of dates and times clearly documented.

Some scholars say the calendar detailed in the Book of Jubilees predicted a window for the Messiah to arrive between 10 BC and 2 or 3 AD — which is exactly when Jesus Christ was born (on December 25th, probably).

Jubilees contains other interesting notes, including that Hebrew was the original language of heaven and of all the people, until they lost that language after Babel — and then gained it back when the angels taught it to Moses.

But Jubilees is also incredibly legalistic — and discusses the enforcement of laws that don’t matter as much after the arrival of the Messiah and creation of a new covenant. Nevertheless, Jubilees provides detail and context to the early world which helps frame the entire Biblical story.

A Double-Edged Sword

I kind of agonized over where to put Enoch and Jubilees in the Bible in a Year Plan. The events within those books occur very early on in the chronological timeline of the Bible, but they are not included as Scripture for principled reasons. Introducing them without the scaffolding of the canon of Scripture risks distracting new readers from the Bible’s central story and has the potential to invite the kind of esoteric fixation that often replaces understanding with speculation. There is no shortage of speculative podcasts and books that do just that — and I believe some of these sources lead astray believers and non-believers alike.

I ultimately tried to include these books where they are most relevant but without competing with the more important parts of Scripture that cover similar aspects of the Biblical worldview.

Curiosity killed the cat — and curiosity, pride, and obsession can lead us away from God if we aren’t careful, so let us be sure we are reading these texts for what is in them, in the full context of the rest of Scripture, and not for what we want to see esoterically.

Again, I encourage you to pray for discernment while we read all of these texts.

Why We Are Reading Them

Whether we believe these books should be included in Scripture or not, we are going to be reading the Book of Enoch and Book of Jubilees for historical context more than for divine guidance. I believe that they can answer questions that many people have right at the outset of their Biblical journey, and can support people in understanding the reality of this story, and the reality of the spiritual world we find ourselves in today.

Here is a link to an online version of The Book of Enoch.

And here is a link to a website of The Book of Jubilees.

We start Enoch this week! We will learn much, much more about the Watchers. And will revisit the rest of the sections of Enoch throughout the year where they are most relevant, while we will read Jubilees in March.

Questions or comments on Enoch and Jubilees? Share below or in the chat!

Here is the link to the free pdf:

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The overview and first page are shown in the image below so you know what you are getting.

We will be reading in roughly chronological order, one book at a time, except where it makes sense to jump back and forth between books. We are also reading one Psalm or a section of a Proverb each day, as these offer daily prayer/songs/wisdom to support us as we seek full understanding of this historical and religious text.

I strongly encourage you to pray for understanding and discernment as we go through each text.

The plan I put together includes all the books of the Catholic and most of the books of the Orthodox Bible, with “Messianic checkpoints” reading one of the gospels each quarter so it doesn’t take us a year to get to Jesus, which also allows us to see how Jesus was foretold and foreshadowed throughout the Old Testament. It also includes the books of Enoch and Jubilees because they give more information on what happened in the early world time period which can both answer questions that aren’t articulated within Scripture and help us make sense of the entire Biblical story (more on these two books in the next post).

The structure and schedule of this plan is inspired by the Great Adventure Bible and accompanying podcast by Father Mike Schmitz (the “Messianic checkpoints” and readings of one Psalm or Proverb a day follow the days of his plan almost exactly). It also roughly aligns with much of the Stranger Theology Bible in a Year study plan — so if you are concurrently participating in either of those Bible studies, or listening to those podcasts, we will be covering a lot of the material at similar times and you can deepen your understanding with further analysis from those theologians.

I will be posting the upcoming readings every Sunday, with the exception of this week as we are starting on Thursday, January 1 (I will send out the readings and begin the chat on Wednesday). I will share some of my thoughts and questions on the upcoming week’s readings, which we can discuss via comments on the post and conversations in the chat.

I have yet to decide if and how I want to do zooms or lives to have further discussions with you all on specific topics — if you have ideas let me know in the comments or in the chat! This has been a quickly evolving project and I greatly appreciate all your support.

I look forward to reading the Bible with you!

And also with you.

Some articles are free and some have a free intro, with more information behind a paywall. The most important article I’ve written for background reading — A Brief History of Space and Time — is entirely free. Joining this Substack as a paid subscriber is a great way to support this ongoing free Bible study! As well as the rest of my work on health & wellness, history, and theology.

The most relevant articles to this Bible Study include:

And of course, my first two posts on this Bible study, which hopefully you’ve read and can be found here:

My Background

Many of you have asked what my religious background and experience is.

I’m a cradle Catholic, born to an Irish-American mother and Italian-American father who both lapsed in religious practice and divorced before I turned 2. I was baptized Catholic but never confirmed. It’s been so long since I’ve been to Mass that I would probably still instinctually say, “And also with you.”

I went to an Episcopal grade school, which is technically Protestant, but pretty much the most Catholic of all the Protestant sects. It’s essentially Diet Catholic. I suffered a health crisis at the end of 3rd grade and was expelled from my Episcopal school for fighting and questioning the teacher’s interpretations of the Bible. It was like if Joan of Arc and Martin Luther had a daughter with vaccine-induced encephalitis and PANDAS.

In high school, I attended Unity Church and became an elected youth leader planning weekend retreats for 200 high-school kids across California, Nevada, and Hawaii. Unity Church emerged in the 1800s and is a New Thought church — and New Thought is like Bible-based New Age, incorporating Buddhism, Hinduism, and many New Age schools of thought. At the time that I was involved in Unity Church, our most famous members were Oprah Winfrey and Marianne Williamson (who I once met when she came to our church on a book tour).

Like most people in my generation, I spent much of my 20s and 30s spiritually and religiously driftless. In college, I went full agnostic and studied psychology — though my favorite classes were philosophy classes taught by a Catholic professor. I was fairly skeptical of all religion including the New Age spiritual practices that had surrounded me growing up in California. I met a nice (culturally) Jewish boy in college, who was also basically agnostic, and we eventually got married and had a baby.

When I was 35, I had a health crisis that ripped the rug out from under me. I lost my health and career nearly overnight, and I begged God, daily, if He existed and could hear me, to heal me and tell me what I am meant to do with my life if it was not everything I had spent decades building towards. I began receiving divine inspiration that was clearly from God (via the Holy Spirit) guiding me on methods to heal myself, and urging me to share that information with others using my personal and professional background (much of which you can find in the ‘Health’ tab of this Substack). I also experienced my fair share of demonic interference during this time — which persists from time to time today (and is one of the reasons I have not yet found a church home, and my family and I watch Mass/sermons online on Sundays).

For the last several years, my audience has been asking me to talk more about my religious studies and experiences, especially as it pertains to deep-dives on nearly every conspiracy theory popular today. I’ve gone down all the rabbit holes and come out the other side knowing that the way and the truth is Jesus Christ. And I’m finally ready to do a year-long deep dive into the most significant religious text in history.

I am so excited to read the Bible with you!

xoxo Adrian Claire

The Bible is a collection of writings created over many centuries, in many languages, rather than a single book written all at once. The Bible is divided into two main sections: the Old Testament, which is a collection of the sacred writings of the Jewish people and focuses on creation, God’s covenant with Israel, and the law and prophets; and the New Testament, which centers on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ and the early Christian church. The Old Testament was written in the years B.C. (Before Christ), and the New Testament was written in the years A.D. (Anno Domini — meaning in the year of our Lord, referring to the years after Jesus’ birth).

In early Christianity, there wasn’t a fixed number of books canonized as “the Bible” — there was a collection of 80+ books used by clergy and biblical scholars. They had various levels of importance and contain varying content — the law handed down from God to Moses, history, wisdom/poetry, prophets, gospel (the “good news” of Jesus Christ comprised in what are probably the four most famous books of the Bible: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), letters (epistles), and apocalyptic prophesy. There are dozens of other books written by Jewish and Christian scholars that are not considered biblical canon but are considered historically important to the body of the Christian Church.

The books of the Bible were written by about 40 different authors over about 1500 years in different historical and cultural settings and languages, including Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic, and were later gathered, preserved, and translated as communities of faith recognized them as meaningful and authoritative for understanding God and living a faithful life. The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew and was transcribed into Greek over the course of a few hundred years prior to Jesus’ birth. The Greek translation is called the Septuagint, and it contains 51 books. The New Testament was originally primarily written in Greek.

The various Christian denominations as we know them today — Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant — have their own slightly different versions of how many books they include as canonical in their bible, as shown in the infographic below.

The Catholic and Orthodox churches trace their history back to Jesus. They developed from the same original unified Christian church — with Catholic meaning universal or according to the whole and Orthodox meaning right belief or correct teaching (and both words originating in Greek). The original Christian church emerged in a time when not everyone could read, and almost no one outside of clergy, churches, and monasteries had a Bible. Prior to the invention of the printing press, all copies of the Bible were transcribed by hand, and owning one outside of a church or monastery would have been extremely rare.

At this time, and for about 1500 years, the Christian religion flowed from the Church as the authority and keeper of the religious tradition, with the scriptures supporting those traditions and being accessible to, and read and taught by, the clergy. This is why various Orthodox churches have slightly different canons in their Bibles. While there have, at times, been movements to restrict who read the Bible for dubious reasons, the lack of laypeople reading the Bible for themselves typically wasn’t a conspiracy — it was simply the nature of the historical reality of literacy rates and the accessibility and significant cost of books. The unified church was the main keeper of tradition.

The biblical canon of the unified Christian Church took shape over the first several centuries of Christianity. The Council of Rome in 382 AD affirmed the 46 books of the Old Testament and 27 books in the New Testament that comprise the Catholic canon today. Nevertheless, full consensus across all Christian communities developed gradually and independently, and clergy continued to read and engage with a variety of non-canonical texts that were not necessarily considered Scripture, but were considered historically important.

Growing tensions between the Eastern and Western Christian traditions resulted in the Great Schism in 1054 A.D., wherein the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church split into two Christian traditions separate from one another. The Catholic Church has kept the canon of the 73 books established in the 4th century (and by this time was using a Latin translation), while the Orthodox Church included more of the books preserved in the Septuagint. Different Orthodox churches have slightly different canon ranging from 76 for Greek Orthodox to up to 88 for Ethiopian Orthodox, and other variations in between.

The Protestant Reformation arose in the 16th century, approximately 500 years ago, over disagreements with the Roman Catholic Church. The invention of the printing press amplified these critiques, allowing ideas about reform and direct access to the Bible to spread rapidly across Europe.

Arguments about which books to include in the Protestant Bible arose, with Reformers desiring to remove books that they disagreed with theologically. They pulled 7 books out of the Old Testament, labelled them “apocrypha,” and moved them to the back of the Bible. The books they retained were consistent with the Masoretic Text, the Hebrew text of the Old Testament developed in the 7th-10th centuries — though it could be argued that this Jewish text had incentive to drop books and passages that, in retrospect, affirmed Jesus as the Messiah. Martin Luther, father of the Reformation, also wanted to remove 4 books from the New Testament (Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation), but this did not reach wide agreement and support. The Protestant Bible actually continued to include all 73 books, with the apocrypha printed at the back, until the 1880s, when they removed those 7 books altogether and started printing 66 book Bibles to cut costs.

Some Protestants argue that the Catholic Church added books to the Bible, but as you can see from the timeline and evolution of the canon of various Christian factions, this simply isn’t historically accurate. There have always been a lot of books with various levels of importance. It’s not like the Catholic and Orthodox Church went 1500 years without a set of books they called the Bible and then added to their theology later — they evolved independently and together with slightly differing canon depending on what was considered most crucial to their traditions. In the mid 16th-century, the Roman Catholic Church gathered in response to the Reformation and reaffirmed their 73 book Biblical canon (amongst other traditions).

The simple truth is that many of the theological aspects at the center of the Protestant Reformation were discussed and validated in the books that got cut, and these books are important to overall Christian history and theology — whether you personally consider them scripture or not, and whether they agree with your sect’s theology or not. I look forward to further discussing the arguments for and against these books as we get to them in the readings.

It also does not escape me that the Protestant Bible contains 66 books, but I digress.

The good news is that all the arguments are about how many books are included in the Old Testament. Everyone agrees that there are 27 books in the New Testament. Well, everyone except the Ethiopians.

Do you have questions or comments on the development of the Bible? Ask in the comments below! This topic can be divisive so I ask that everyone approach this topic with respect and curiosity.

I am so excited to announce our 2026 Bible Study. I am currently calling it the ‘Good Book Club’ but this name may evolve. I am also considering calling it GodTok — like MomTok, get it? Then when we’re slogging through Leviticus I can be like, “Will GodTok survive this?” and we’ll all laugh. Yeah, you get it.

Who is this for?

Anyone who wants to learn more about the Bible!

Anyone who has drifted from faith in God to New Age leanings and back again, anyone who has gone down every rabbit hole and found that all roads lead to Scripture, anyone who has ever set out to debunk Christianity and found themselves totally surprised by a resulting call to faith.

Anyone who wants to draw nearer to Jesus.

And anyone who’s not yet sure where they are!

This is open to people at all points of their faith walk. Whether this is your first time reading through the Bible or your 10th, whether you’re able to commit to every reading or just want to join along for the Substack ride, I hope this group will bring interesting discussion points for all of us to deepen our understanding of world history, human nature, and the spiritual world we find ourselves living in — as well as providing the scaffolding of a structured book club to accomplish actually reading the Bible in a year.

How to Join

Joining is easy — simply subscribe to the Capitalism & Glitter Substack!

All Bible Study specific content will be available for free, however there are certain articles of mine that relate to various topics that already have been or will be published behind a paywall (though even these articles typically have a significant free introductory section). Feel free to join and participate as either a free or paid subscriber by entering your email below.

How to Opt-Out

If you are already signed up as a subscriber, but you do not want to get the Bible Study emails and articles (approximately one email/article a week), you can opt-out of this section of my Substack using the following steps:

• Go to your Substack profile (top right corner) and click the dropdown arrow

• Click on ‘Manage Subscription’ and find the ‘Notifications’ section — it should look something like the screenshot below

• Switch off the toggle next to “Bible Study” but leave the other toggles on, like so:

  

That’s it! You can opt in or out of the Good Book Club at any time.

Where Weekly Discussions Will Be Held

I am planning to send out a weekly post/email each Sunday with the readings for the week. You can follow along with daily readings, which will take approximately 15-20 minutes a day, or roughly 1.5-2 hours a week. You can spread out the daily readings, do them all in one sitting, or break them up however you want over the week.

If you are unable to do the readings one week, you can simply catch up the next week, or follow along with the discussion in the comments and chat. I understand life happens and this is a commitment that not everyone will be able to keep up with. While I, of course, hope to cultivate a dedicated book club of consistently engaged weekly readers — you can jump in or out at any time.

We can then share thoughts on the readings in the comments on that post and in Substack chat. I am looking to you guys to help me understand which topics you want to focus on and help me shape the discussion — so please feel free to share your thoughts, questions, and comments.

The Bible & The Plan

“Which Bible are we using?” has been the number one question since I announced I was planning to do a Bible in a Year Book Club.

For those who are brand new to the Bible — there are multiple versions of the Bible used by the various Christian denominations. And when I say “versions,” I don’t mean that there are wholly different stories — there are simply some versions that contain 10-20% more books than others.

The Bible is not a single book written all at once, it is nearly 100 books written across 1500 years by about 40 different authors. Different Christian traditions — Protestant (66), Catholic (73), and Orthodox (76-88) — include a different numbers of books depending on what is most relevant to their theology. But, all of these books (and more!) are relevant to Christian history.

You can read and learn more on this in my second Bible Study article titled History of the Bible, which will be published later this week.

Our Bible in a Year Plan

For the sake of completeness, and in the interest of exploring what is interesting, we are going to be reading 75 books of the Bible — the 73 included in the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles, plus the Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees, both of which are contained in the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible. I am potentially open to being talked into adding more books if there is something of particular interest, so please let me know in the comments if there are other books you think are important or relevant for us to cover.

In order to best understand the history and context of the Bible, we will be reading the books chronologically. We will largely be following the Ascension Bible in a Year plan covered by Father Mike Schmitz, because it incorporates all 73 books chronologically but it also has “Messianic checkpoints” where you read one of the four Gospels each quarter, so that it doesn’t take 9 months to get to the New Testament. This also allows us to see the foreshadowing of Jesus throughout the Old Testament.

I am also referencing the Blue Letter Bible Chronological Plan as we go through the year and structure the readings. This is very similar to the Ascension Plan, although the Blue Letter Plan covers just one book at a time, and is strictly in chronological order so does not get to the New Testament until October.

As well, I just learned that the guys from Blurry Creatures and Dr. Joel Muddamalle are launching their own Bible in a Year project, called Stranger Theology, and I will be following along to see how that evolves and if their structure and content is something we want to incorporate as well. They will be focusing on the “blurry” content in the Bible that often gets left out of other theological studies, so it should be interesting (though it looks like you do have to pay to join and read most of their Bible Study articles). UPDATE — their bible in a year plan pdf can be found here.

There are just so many good and useful resources. What a great time to be alive and reading the Bible!

Bibles & Other Resources

The second most common question I have been getting since announcing this Bible study is, “Which Bible should I get?”

If you have followed me for a while, you have heard me say the following: The best Bible is the one you can understand and will actually read.

All 75 books we will be reading are available for free on the Bible app and with accessing pdfs online, so we will each need to decide what we want to purchase. All Bibles contain at least 66 of the 75 books we are going to read (at least, they should). The Protestant Bible has 66 books, the Catholic Bible has 73 books, and the Orthodox Bibles vary, with 76 in Greek Orthodox and as many as 81-88 in Ethiopian Orthodox. You can get or use whatever Bible you are most comfortable with, or is closest to your faith, and supplement with other resources as needed.

Your reading list will be to piece together the following:

• A Bible (likely containing 66-73 books, all available for free in the Bible App)

  • the Apocrypha/Deuterocanon of the 7 books not included in the 66-book Protestant Bible, if needed

• The Book of Enoch (free pdf available online)

• The Book of Jubilees (free pdf available online)

Translations

Not only are there multiple versions of the Bible for various denominations, there are also multiple translations of the original Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic text, ranging from word-for-word translations (known as formal equivalence) to thought-for-thought translations (dynamic equivalence) which can be easier to read, especially for beginners. There are also paraphrased translations, and those are the least precise and accurate to the original text.

Below are some of the most popular translations:

• NLT (New Living Translation) — an excellent choice for a beginner, this uses modern language, dynamic equivalence, and is the easiest to read and understand. The standard is a Protestant (66 book) translation, and the Catholic version is NLTCE (New Living Translation Catholic Edition), which contains 73 books including the apocrypha (which is the protestant name for the 7 books not in their Bibles).

• NIV (New International Version) — this is also a great choice for a beginner and is the most widely read English Bible and it balances a more modern translation for readability for accuracy. Protestant (66 book) translation only.

• CSB (Christian Standard Bible) - increasing in prominence as an optimal equivalence between formal and dynamic equivalence translations. Protestant (66 book) translation only.

• ESV (English Standard Version) — this is the closest to the original translation of Greek and Hebrew using a very literal formal translation but modern English. Protestant (66 book) translation only.

• NABRE (New American Bible, Revised Edition) — mostly dynamic equivalence with some formal elements, a more readable version of the Catholic Bible containing 73 books.

• RSV-2CE (Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition) — more formal translation, a more literally accurate version of the Catholic Bible containing 73 books.

Bible App

First and foremost, I highly recommend that everyone download the YouVersion Bible App. It is free and it contains thousands of versions of the Bible in thousands of languages. This app allows you to cycle through translations to find the one that’s most comfortable for you to read. You can also compare translations to help your understanding. It contains translations for Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox denominations, so you will have access to nearly all the books we are reading in the palm of your hand (except for Enoch and Jubilees).

If you are a beginner, I recommend flipping through the NLT and NIV versions and determining which one is more readable and understandable to you.

Bible Types

There are a few types of Bibles you can buy — a standard Bible with just the text of the Scriptures, a journaling or wide-margin Bible that has wider pages and space for you to take notes, or a study Bible that includes commentary with explanations, maps, and additional information that can help you understand the Bible.

Below are some of my favorite options for Bibles and other supplemental texts you can buy. Some of these are referral links, and many of them are available in my Amazon Storefront (along with my favorite Bible history chart and a Bible Storybook for Kids). (And don’t you worry, my husband is currently workshopping a reel to make fun of me for sharing affiliate links to Bibles. Hey, I’ve gotta support the free Bible study somehow!)

Protestant Bibles (66 Books)

• ESV Illuminated Bible, Art Journaling Edition - I have this and I love it, but it’s almost too pretty to open because I’m afraid my kids will mess it up, and it’s definitely too pretty to write in. It also comes in Burgundy and Olive Green.

• CSB Notetaking Bible: Oxford Theme (10% off with this link) — Also very pretty, but not too pretty to write in. The cup of coffee on the front feels cozy and inviting.

• NLT Notetaking Bible: Adelaide Theme (10% off with this link) — This might be my number one recommendation for someone new to the Bible. It’s the prettiest version of the easiest translation that I’ve seen. I’m debating buying this one or the previous one.

Catholic Bible (73 Books)

I’m honestly a little disappointed that there aren’t more options for cute aesthetic Catholic Bibles, but I get it because the Catholic Bibles tend to be more solemn and reverent. And I know the aesthetic is not the point of reading the Bible, but as a cradle Catholic I do take great joy in aesthetics. I am, however, very interested in the Great Adventure Study Bible, which incorporates a color-coded timeline and contains charts, maps, and commentary explaining all the historical context. This is also the version used by the Ascension Bible in a Year Plan. There are multiple versions of this, including the standard paperback (pictured here) and a note-taking version. I will likely buy this as well.

The Ignatius Study Bible is also widely regarded, and currently on sale, but I have been advised that it is huge and can be intimidating. But it is chock full of information explaining the historical, cultural, literary, and archaeological background of Scripture.

The Books of Enoch and Jubilees

There are so many versions of the Book of Enoch and Book of Jubilees floating around and it’s hard to determine which ones are legitimate. Everyone looooves a secret hidden book cut from the Bible!

We’ll get into the details of why these books were left out of most Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant canons, but for now let’s just focus on which versions are the most reliable, and where you can buy or find pdfs of those reliable texts.

First of all, you may see reference to three books of Enoch, with their titles styled as 1 Enoch, 2 Enoch, and 3 Enoch. Only the first one, 1 Enoch, was known to Jesus and the Apostles, is the one referred to in the New Testament, was widely read by church fathers, and is included in the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible. This is the one we will be reading, and we will not read 2 and 3 as they are less historically and canonically relevant and are more akin to fanfic.

The two reliable scholarly translators/translations of both Enoch and Jubilees are:

• R. H. Charles – an Irish Anglican theologian and translator from Northern Ireland who translated Jubilees in 1895 and Enoch in 1906 from Ethiopic language (Ge’ez). His work is classic and influential, and still cited, though now dated.

• George Nickelsburg & James VanderKam – Modern professors of religion, their work is the most current gold standard of translations of Enoch and Jubilees (published in 2012 and 2020, respectively), as they incorporate contextual evidence found from the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in 1947.

Here are two good options to access the Book of Enoch online:

• Book of Enoch at Internet Archive (Nickelsburg & VanderKam translation)

• Book of Enoch on web (Charles translation)

And two good option to access VanderKam’s version of Jubilees online here:

• Book of Jubilees hosted on web at St. Mary’s, Texas

• Book of Jubilees pdf

Options for purchasing the Nickelsburg and VanderKam versions of the Book of Enoch and Book of Jubilees, as well as several of my favorite Bibles and other resources, can be found in my Amazon storefront.

NOTE: If you see a collection of these texts claiming to also have the Book of Jasher, immediately disregard that in its entirety. The real original Book of Jasher has been lost for centuries if not millenia, and the version of Jasher circulating in modern day is a forgery from the Middle Ages. The Book of Jasher was indeed mentioned in the Hebrew Bible but has not been recovered, and anyone claiming to have it now is presenting a relatively recent falsified book that has more recently been promoted by Mormon interests (Joseph Smith always catching strays in my religion articles).

In Summary…

All you need to get started is to join this Substack and download the Bible App. Purchase a Bible you like, if you want. Buy the Books of Enoch and Jubilees if you want, or check out the links to follow along online.

That’s it!

I look forward to reading the Bible with all of you!